MINISTER OFFICIALLY OPENS NEW ZNFU OFFICE COMPLEX AND … The Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Honorable Wilbur Simuusa on Thursday 22nd May, 2014 officially opened the newly constructed ZNFU Office Complex in the Lusaka Agricultural show grounds. The new Office complex which is valued at over K20 million will initially be rented out for the purpose of repaying the loan from ZANACO which made part of this K20 million investment. The Minister congratulated ZNFU for the timely investment, which he said is going to help build the Union’s financial sustainability in the near future. At the same event, the Minister retaliated his Government’s continued support to agriculture and assured ZNFU and the entire farming community of his commitment to turn around agriculture and make it the major income earner for all farmers and main contributor to national GDP. He further assured ZNFU Council members from all over the country inputs distribution will be done in good time and that his Ministry will put all required measures to straighten crop marketing for the 2014 marketing season. LAUNCHES ZNFU E- EXTENSION SYSTEM Honourable Simuusa also launched the recently developed ZNFU e-extension system designed to provide farmers with agricultural information. The ZNFU E-extension is a menu based platform accessible on every phone and interacts with the user by presenting them with menus from which the user has to select a menu option to access various agricultural extension information and tips. Farmers will be able to access relevant agricultural information in their area without having to travel or search for this information. The system will provide the farmers with: 1) Access to reliable up to date, market and extension information which is sometimes difficult for farmers to get hold of. The platform will provide farmers for a minimum cost with daily updated information on weather, meetings, field days, alerts on disease outbreaks, cases of theft, new legislations, business opportunities, etc; 2) Input prices- In order for farmers to make informed decisions on which inputs to buy and where, the system will provide prices on inputs from various companies and the location of where to buy them. Enabling the farmers to budget, get the best prices and to avoid being over charged and 3) Contact information- The system will provide the farmer with contact details of all the relevant agriculture support players in the area, this could be an inputs supplier, MAL official, ZNFU office, etc.
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 08:08:56 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015