The Centre for Trade Policy and Development – CTPD has expressed concerned with the slow pace of distributing farming inputs for the 2019/2020 farming season and questioned the claim that 90% of inputs have been distributed.
As of August 2019, Agriculture Minister Michael Katambo informed the nation that the Government had distributed about 90 percent of the farming inputs countrywide, for the 2019/2020 farming season but reality on the ground seems to suggest that a number of Small-scale farmers have not yet received their farming inputs for the 2019/2020 farming season even after depositing their K400 contribution.
CTPD Head of Research Brian Mwiinga has observed that Farmers in places near to Lusaka such as parts of Chongwe have not received any inputs for this farming season.
“We are left to wonder how the situation is in other far flung places of Zambia. What is even more worrying is the fact that almost all provinces in Zambia have received the first rains and in an ideal situation, the farmers should have planted their various crops, but this is not the case due to the non-delivery of the required farming inputs’’, said Mwiinga.
According to information availed to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT by CTPD Information and Communications Specialist Mwaka Nyimbili, Mwiinga stated that as the rains intensify, some places with poor road networks in Zambia will become hard to reach, a situation which will further affect the effective delivery of inputs.
CTPD however expects government to have learnt some lessons from the past farming seasons when inputs were delivered very late stating that the current high mealie meal prices are a function of a combination of factors such as poor planning and in a small part natural causes such as poor rainfall in some parts of the country.
He has since urged Government to act swiftly in addressing the situation to avoid the mistakes that have been made in the past farming seasons and has also advised farmers countrywide to be strategic when choosing the types of crops to plant.
‘’With the help of the Agricultural Extension Officers in their various locations, let them consult them on the expected rainfall for the year so that they can choose seed varieties that will be in tandem with the expected rainfall as well as well as the quality of their soils. We wish to see our Agricultural sector going back to the glory days of recording bumper harvests in order to ensure National Food security’’, He said.
