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Raise income for smallholder farmers - IDE

Raise income for smallholder farmers - IDE
By Kabanda Chulu
Friday October 26, 2007 [04:00]

INTERNATIONAL Development Enterprises (IDE) Zambia director Keith Henderson has said there is need to raise income levels of smallholder farmers in order to improve their standard of living. During the launch of the four-year US$2.5 million Rural Prosperity Initiative (RPI) project, Henderson said the programme would focus on smallholder farmers, who currently earn less than US$2 per day.

Henderson said IDE would implement the project together with partners from Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) in order to increase the farmers’ incomes.

He said the RPI would promote the increased use of low cost irrigation technologies by smallholder farmers and development of a sustainable supply chain.

“It is hoped that this will create demand for the technologies and encourage sustainable participation of local manufacturers, dealers, traders and other service providers,” said Henderson. “Mainly our project will focus on raising the income of living levels and raise them out of poverty and our typical target groups are smallholder farmers currently earning less than US$2 per day.”

The RPI is a four-year project targeting 14, 000 smallholder farmers in Zambia that mainly produce vegetable crops to raise their income levels.

The project is funded by the Gates Foundation and its target areas are Kabwe, Lusaka, Kafue, Monze, Pemba, Choma and Livingstone and already 5,000 smallholder farmers have been engaged.

Labels: FARMERS, SMEs

posted by MrK @ 7:17 AM