Agriculture expert Dr. Oliver Bulaya has urged the government to support both small and large-scale farmers to boosting wheat production.
Speaking in an interview with Zambia Business Times, Dr. Bulaya attributed the low production of wheat in the country as a leading cause of the hike in wheat commodities like flour which is affecting the prices of the final product.
Dr Bulaya explained that many large-scale wheat farmers were contracted by the government to assist in maize production, causing a reduction in wheat cultivation adding that this shift was driven by the lucrative maize market, leading to decreased wheat production.
He also attributed the increase in flour prices to the imbalance in wheat supply and demand in the market.
Dr. Bulaya stressed the urgency for Zambia to embrace climate-smart agricultural practices such as minimum tillage, crop rotation, and residual retention to mitigate the challenges posed by climate change.
“The 2023-2024 farming season has been marked as a year where we saw large-scale farmers participating in the growing of maize and some of them abandoned wheat production to opt for maize because currently, it is fetching good money both locally as well as in the region,” He alluded.
Dr. Bulaya further attributed the hike in flour prices to the cut in the number of hectares for wheat that were cultivated leading to a deficit in terms of the number of farmers that had participated as well as the number of hectares that were cultivated for wheat.
Furthermore, Dr Bulaya disclosed that the effects of climate change had been a major contributor to the hike of prices of a number of crops on the market as the effect was not only limited to small-scale farmers but also had an impact on commercial Farmers.
“This had affected the output in terms of the yields of these crops due to the variabilities of the climate as you are aware mainly large-scale farmers are dependent on irrigation as these crops cannot grow in winter but there are certain areas where the water table is not being enough because of prolonged dry spells that had affected certain areas in terms of underground water,” He alluded.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bulaya further stated that the hike in these prices could also be attributed to the demand and supply of these commodities where it had been witnessed to have had a low supply of wheat production and high demand of it on the market.
He further urged that there is a need for the country to adopt climate-smart agriculture by incorporating technologies or techniques like minimum tillage, crop rotation, and residual retention.
