Sustainable Fertilizer Academy celebrates second anniversary

As IFA marks the occasion, it is a fitting opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the last year and share a glimpse of some upcoming plans.

In 2024, the focus of SFA has been expanding its reach and scope to new regions while creating new partnerships. In practice, this has meant reaching a larger student base with more courses and ensuring the SFA offerings are as accessible as possible for users from around the world.

The platform’s first year brought with it 200 students and 70 certifications. Its second year brought a jump to over 1000 new online students from even more diverse geographies. Countries newly involved in the SFA in the last year include Brazil, Turkey, China, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, and the USA.

Partnerships have been a crucial feature of the second year of the SFA’s operation. A collaboration with Sino-Agri, an IFA member company, allowed it to reach a record 1 million agronomists from across China through live-streams of classes on topics such as nutrient recycling, nutrient recovery, fertilizer impact on biodiversity, and crop nutrition data. Through a partnership with the West African Fertilizer Association (WAFA) SFA was able to take selected courses offline and directly into classrooms. IFA co-hosted on-site workshops at universities in Nigeria and Liberia, with the success of this initiative allowing an additional 800 students to benefit from the services. The company is planning on continuing its work with local universities as enabled by WAFA by expanding into Mali and the Ivory Coast.

This increased reach has meant that additional language options have been of vital importance. To address this need the company has added English and Spanish subtitles to all SFA videos. Portuguese and Turkish quickly followed to facilitate specific partnerships and initiatives.

As IFA goes into its third year of the SFA’s operation, it is excited about plans for the future, including the expansion of activities into China, India, and Turkey as well as continued work in West Africa.

With this expansion comes the opportunity to focus on more region–specific challenges in sustainable farming practices. In part, this will be done through improved access by farmers to fertilizer courses (for ex-ample, through existing mobile phone apps of IFA members) to give them the tools they need to improve yields in a sustainable manner. And more subtitles like Arabic will be added to all SFA classes, too.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldfertilizer.com/project-news/04092024/sustainable-fertilizer-academy-celebrates-second-anniversary/