Maravi

Lip servicing to agriculture

Lip servicing to agriculture
By Editor
Wed 10 Feb. 2010, 04:00 CAT

AGRICULTURE still remains a very important part of our country’s economic development and food security.

Not only does agriculture tend to feed the entire population, it correlates and interacts with other related industries. A country is actually socially and politically stable with the availability of food. We have always said food security is a key requirement and no nation can effectively grow with a stable agricultural base while harbouring an army of hungry people.

Over the years, there have been many pronouncements from the government on developing the agriculture sector. In last year’s budget, finance minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane emphasised the need to build on various economic diversification programmes, which the government had pursued over the years.

Dr Musokotwane said the development of agriculture was one of the main pillars of the country’s poverty reduction programmes especially in rural areas. This year’s K16.7 trillion budget also hinges on enhancing growth through competitiveness and diversification and the government actually increased the allocation to the agriculture and livestock sectors to K1.139 trillion from last year’s K1.096 trillion.

However, all these allocations and pronouncements will not help the agriculture sector if some of the challenges faced by our farmers are not addressed. That is why we agree with the observation by Pemba UPND member of parliament David Matongo that the difficulty with implementing our country’s agriculture policy from theory is precisely the reason we are still a food deficit country. Matongo has touched on many areas such as the inputs distributions, reliance on rain-fed agriculture and animal diseases as some issues that need serious evaluation and reflection. We cannot agree with him more.

The country’s low performance in the agriculture sector is partly attributed to the high cost of inputs and the government has not made things any easier for our people. We are aware that the government has introduced the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP), which now provides 200,000 farmers with cheap fertiliser. However, this country has other farmers who are not on that programme who still need affordable farming inputs. The government has neglected the Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ), a company that could have helped the country with cheaper and readily available fertiliser to encourage more people to get into the agriculture sector.

In any case, the government spends half of the budgetary allocation to the agriculture sector on the FISP, which runs on imported fertiliser and yet NCZ needs far much less than this amount of money to be up and running. The reason for this is not difficult to understand when one critically examines who is involved in the importation of fertilisers and the benefits that go into their pockets.

Apart from the problem of inputs, the agriculture sector is affected by limited access to credit, inadequate infrastructure and extension services. We are aware that over 1,700 extension workers were recruited in 2008 and money was last year allocated for procurement of motorbikes and bicycles as well as construction of staff houses. However, farmers in rural areas still lack proper extension services for them to be able to run their farms effectively and ensure a meaningful yield without expert help.

The livestock sector has also suffered severely due to poor management and unending animal diseases which have almost become a perennial phenomenon. We are aware that the government has created a separate ministry specifically for livestock and fisheries and we hope this will help the sector, which has suffered numerous setbacks with farmers in Southern and Western provinces losing most of their animals. We have over the years continued to depend on imported vaccines and there is no talk of establishing a strong local livestock back-up vaccine production plant yet as a long-term solution to the problem of animal diseases. We still lack routine surveillance exercises which can help identify potential outbreak areas before an actual outbreak unlike in countries like Botswana where livestock disease control strategies are a general knowledge to every traveler and screening points are applied to all parts of the country whether there is an outbreak or not.

The country, in its quest to curb animal diseases, has also not taken advantage of the OIE terrestrial code that provides principles for the application of zoning and regionalisation in the control of infectious diseases based on sound risk assessments rather than risk avoidance.

These principles recognise that factors such as physical and geographical barriers and epidemiological considerations relevant to a particular disease are more appropriate mechanisms for defining areas from animal movement restriction or control. We do not even know how much local research has been applied in the epidemiological investigations of diseases that frequently break out in the country. What the country needs is a common voice and purpose of action that will save the beleaguered livestock industry.

There has also been a lot of concern about rain-fed agriculture and there have been calls for government to help promote irrigation. An irrigation fund was set up and it is now being managed by the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission. We do not know how much has been done to promote irrigation and the matter will only be heavily debated when the country faces a drought.

The marketing system of farming produce is another area that still needs to be addressed to ensure that our farmers are given a just return for their labour. Those who grow our tomatoes, cabbages and other vegetables and fruits often have to endure the pain of seeing them rot due to lack of market.

These challenges in the agriculture sector actually make the industry very unattractive to private investment. As long as these issues are not addressed, we will continue to talk about developing our agriculture sector for many years to come instead of focusing on another sector.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the rural people and they need affordable inputs for them to be able to produce food for sale and consumption. Agriculture is also a critical component in the country’s efforts to reduce poverty and if the government wants to reduce the poverty levels further from the current 64 per cent, they need to pay special attention to this sector.

We have difficulties understanding the government’s commitment to growing the country’s economy because at times their pronouncements do not tally with their actions. In countries where agricultural productivity has risen, the fastest rates of economic growth have occurred. Actually, we need to understand that an increase in agricultural yields could go a long way in reducing the number of people currently living below the poverty datum line. Arguably, hunger and food insecurity have many causes often outside agriculture but it remains a vital contributor to national household food security.

Undoubtedly, food security is central to the country’s economic, political and social future and meeting the basic food needs of our people must be top priority in our government planning. Hunger is a sign of gross injustice and a block to development. We need to pay serious attention to our agriculture sector.

Labels: AGRICULTURE, CEEC, FISP, HUNGER, IRRIGATION

posted by MrK @ 1:15 PM