I am Mihayo Lilanga small holderfarmer of Mwamigongwa Village found in Malili Ward of Simiyu Region, Now day exntension officer visit in our agricultural field, I have been given Cotton seeds on time, I have been given a pesticide Knapsack sprayer, I have been given pesticides to kill cotton pests every two weeks. They are brought to the village and the farmers are called for distribution. During the previous years, such as 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, or 2021.

Cotton seeds and pesticides came out of time and were not enough and were distributed preferentially to farmers and pesticide Knapsack sprayers. The whole village with 1600 households was arriving 2 or 5 times at the same time instead of being given free or on credit to farmers. Instead, the extension officer arrived in the village to arrest farmers who mixed other crops with cotton.

They now visit us in the fields to give us advice about farming and to increase production. It's an excellent project from FODEO called Boresha Kilimo. I remember when FODEO came to the village. They called a public meeting in the village and introduced the project and encouraged us to form a Socila Accounatbility Monitoring (SAM) committee for our village.

We proposed the names of 6 members, 3 women and 3 men. FODEO told us that they would train two only SAM members according the ir budget. Later SAM walked around our hamlet to collect our agricultural challenges facing through score cards. form They said they would present our challenges to ward and district leaders.

At the moment of what we are seeing, we are surprised by the success we are having now. If it continues like this, we will really reap a lot of cotton. But despite the challenges of cotton starting to improve, our cry is still there in the maize crop. The seeds we receive that we don't even understand, there are many insects that attack maize and we don't have pesticides, this is causing us a lot of food security challenges.

The Boresha Kilimo Busega project funded by The Foundation for Civil Society - FCS. Project empowers smallholder farmers through a social accountability monitoring approach to enhance beneficiaries' demand for improvement of agriculture service delivery in selected wards of Shigala, Igalukilo and Malili wards as a priority area and involves Social Accountability Monitoring - SAM team activities.

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