Ousmane Willane is a farmer of nearly 70 rainy seasons living in the village of Touba Taba located at 7 kilometers far in South of Kafrine town in Senegal. Ousmane, who is one of the first Master farmers of the Peace Corps Senegal mission, was chosen in 2021 with three other of his colleagues to demonstrate the potential of new dual purpose millet and cowpea varieties which have the particularity of being highly more productive and more nutritious than farmers varieties in addition to maintaining greenness at maturity and thus suitable for livestock feeding, but, still struggling to be well known and adopted by farmers.

The scaling up of the Senegalese Agricultural Research Institute (ISRA) technologies developed under the support Feed the Future Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab (SIIL), Millet and Sorghum Innovation Lab (SMIL) and Innovation programs USAID’s Lab for Legume System Research (ILLSR) is part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2017 between SIIL-PC -ISRA. As such, Ousmane and his colleagues received each in the start of the 2021 rainy season from the SIIL coordinator at the Regional Center of Excellence on Dry Cereals and Associated Crops (CERAAS), 500 g of the new varieties of millet SL28 (Souna Saloum), SL169 (Souna Sine) and SL423 (Souna Baol) and, 500g of the new cowpea varieties (Leona and Kelle) and the old variety Yacine as well. “I had really hesitated to take the seeds when our Director asked to test these crops because not only I didn’t know them but mainly because, the rainy season had already started and we had already sown” said Ousmane to the Coordinator of the SIIL Program came to visit him on the rainy morning of September 5, 2021. “I admit that it would have been a big mistake on my part. First, I was early highly impressed just few days after sowing by the rapid growth of the cowpea said Ousmane before adding:” After only 20 days, I saw the millets almost matching ours in terms of heights with a particularly pretty and impressive biomass. The cowpeas were already starting to come out with their first flowers at the point that all my fellow farmers who passed by here could not hide their surprise when saying to me: “Hey Ousmane! You got us once again! Where did you get these varieties of millet and cowpea so different from ours? What cowpea fruit in such a short time and with such long and big pods? What about those millets with their surprisingly green biomass and the big ear markings starting to stick out of the flag leaf? As answer; Ousmane respond all the time with pride and a broad smile: “It was my staff from USAID, Peace Corps and ISRA who brought them to me for testing and I confess that like you, I am equally impressed ”!

At day, less than 55 days after their sowing, the cowpeas are fully ripe and Ousmane is both very happy but also worried! “With this intensity of cowpea productivity, I’m harvesting today but by tomorrow, it’s as if I haven’t harvested anything yet. You really have to think of machines for harvesting to avoid losses which are likely to be very important “warns Ousmane to the Coordinator of the SIIL program also very happy to have brought such agricultural innovations in this region so far from the research centers. Because certainly, the nagging issue of chronic food and nutritional insecurity in the Senegalese groundnut basin and even areas with similar agro-climatic conditions in the African Oust sub-region might be behind us very soon.