AGRICULTURE PROGRESSING The Ministry of Agriculture is on the right track with regards to its mandate, the Minister of Agriculture, the Honourable Christian De Graaff said when responding to the State-Of-Nation-Address in Parliament. He said his ministry had phased out all programmes that made no impact in the agricultural sector, such as ALDEP and the field fencing programme. He said the earlier programmes had been replaced with the Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agricultural Development (ISPAAD) that received wide appreciation by Batswana. Minister De Graaff said ISPAAD had the potential to significantly improve productivity and increase national output, which in turn improved the food security at both household and national level. He said 127,000 farmers had benefitted from the programme with 450.000 hectares of land under production, adding that farmers should register their produce so that it might be marketed by the BAMB. “In the SADC region, we are rated ‘Number One’ in overall rise in food production. Over the last five years there was an increase of 350 per cent, and, in the last financial year, there has been an increase of 572 per cent from 37,000 metric tonnes to over 200,000 metric tonnes,” he said. The Minister further said his ministry promoted the agriculture sector to improve livelihoods of all Batswana; created employment and contributed to the economic growth of the sector. He said MPs should assist to promote the good programmes that the government had put in place as well as mind-set change of farmers because agriculture is a business and should be run commercially.He said Botswana was a small nation with good soils, water and ample land to pursue agriculture, as such; “I cannot see why we cannot become self-sufficient in food security,” he wondered. He further said, because of the good results from the ISPAAD programme, government had decided to expand it to have horticulture. The Minister said there would be two components under the horticulture farming in the form of inputs and farm equipment whereby the government would give farmers some grants with some contribution from farmers necessary. He said under the production inputs support assistance would be given to farmers to purchase fertilizers, pesticides, seeds and seedlings, whereas farmers would be assisted to acquire drip irrigation and shade nets under the farm equipment. Minister De Graaff said plans were underway for government to come up with provision of infrastructure for high production areas to enable farmers to ferry their produce and be more productive. He also said the ministry would restructure to have its personnel at different agriculture zones to improve production results. De Graaff also said the Botswana Meat Commission’s new management was doing well considering that in the last financial they managed to accumulate P1.1billion with a profit after tax of P25 million.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 04:40:48 +0000
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