On Sunday, August 25, 2024, the activities of the Training of Trainers (TOT) course in the field of “Good Practices for Soil, Irrigation Water and Crop Management” were inaugurated, which is implemented by the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development in the city of New Halfa – Kassala State in the Republic of Sudan during the period (August 25-29, 2024), with the participation of (15) trainees from the cadres of the New Halfa Agricultural Authority.

This course aims to improve the capacity and efficiency of agricultural advisors and engineers to manage, operate, monitor and evaluate the integrated management of productive agricultural resources and ensure sustainability and continuity by forming a core of qualified trainers or what is known as (TOT) for short. As well as in raising the capacity building of trainees in using the data available from monitoring and evaluation for adequate planning to develop annual plans to improve project performance.

The course covers several topics, the most important of which are the analysis and evaluation of the approved technical packages to improve soil and water management, field irrigation, crop cultivation and the required development starting from land preparation to harvest and post-harvest, training methods on the use of innovative technologies to unleash the high potential to improve sustainable irrigated agricultural production, the role of agricultural research, extension and farmers in transferring and localizing technical packages, as well as the requirements and role of improved surface irrigation in raising the efficiency of field irrigation compared to traditional practices, and transferring knowledge to influence farmers’ attitudes towards agriculture, not only as a means of earning a living but also as a business, in addition to the requirements for qualifying the engineering cadre and its role in leading field supervision and planning to implement agricultural technologies.

It is worth noting that this course comes within the implementation of one of the components of the Early Recovery and Rehabilitation of Agricultural Production Project to Achieve Food Security in Sudan, which is implemented and funded by the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development within its work plan for the year 2024 in cooperation with the New Halfa Agricultural Authority. The project idea is based on supporting small farmers and encouraging them to use modern and appropriate technical packages to enable them to improve soil, water, irrigation and production management, starting from land preparation to harvest and post-harvest, by supporting and training them to use innovative technologies in agricultural production in order to enable them to exploit the unused energies within the current agricultural systems.