Maravi

(DAILY MAIL ZM) Bell tolls for agriculture

Bell tolls for agriculture

WITH the rainy season firmly with us now, farmers throughout the country should be getting down to the real business of preparing to come and feed the country in the New Year.

It is time to cultivate, time to plant and time to ensure all the farming implements such as fertilisers and seeds are in place. Now is not the time for farmers to sit back, fold their arms and keep waiting for another day before starting the crop-planting exercise.

But as the business of farming gets underway, it is important for all stakeholders in the sector – farmers themselves, their support groups and the government – to focus on more practical ways of improving efficiency in productivity.

In as much as Zambia has for the past three years been posting a surplus crop on the annual national consumption requirement of 1.6 million metric tonnes of the staple maize, our crop yield per area has remained unacceptably low for sustainable productivity.

Zambia needs to identify technologies suitable to the local climate if we are to become a sustainable food basket for the region. It has often been argued that technology always comes at a huge cost. But the truth is, not all technologies are expensive, monetarily, that is.

For example, conservation farming or minimum tillage, which discourages the cultivation of land, actually costs less in monetary terms because it discourages the usage of chemical fertilisers and chemicals. Yet, it is able to double the yields per hectare with the only extra demand from the farmer being the labour intensiveness.

Countries that have been able to transform themselves into agricultural giants have done so by heavily riding on the back of technology. The Netherlands, for instance, had to reclaim its ‘forsaken’ land from the sea using appropriate technology to become the highest crop-per-hectare producing country in the world.

The same applies to Israel, whose much of the land is a desert. Through the proper usage of irrigation technology, the Israelites have converted the desert into arable land to become one of the world’s leading wine and juice exporting countries.

Much as we commend the government for keeping up with the Farmer Input Support Programme, we feel there is still need to come up with drastic measures to improve use-efficiency for fertilisers, chemicals and seeds.

From a land area where a farmer in another country would normally cultivate three tonnes, ours have had to only realise as much as half the average yield. This should not be the case, especially if considered against the backdrop of our favourable weather pattern and the all-round crop supporting agricultural land.

Farming is a business, an evolving business, and it should be approached as such. We cannot afford to continue holding to the 1960s technologies, and expect to keep up with the dynamic food demands of the 21st Century.

The best way to move forward in this area if the ‘No Farmer, No Food, No Future’ maxim is to be maximised is through constant action-oriented dialogue between the Agriculture ministry and the Zambia National Farmers Union since the lobby group has researched widely on the challenges of agriculture in Zambia.

A two-way kind of communication stream could serve us much better than lip-service on either side, but largely on Government’s side. The government can only win from propping agriculture in our view.

It is the typical win-win situation catch phrase.

Labels: AGRICULTURE

posted by MrK @ 7:38 PM