30 Oct 2014

Mahalapye farmers have been encouraged to form committees essential for collective bargaining.

Former Assistant Minister of Agriculture, Mr Oreeditse Molebatsi said during a recent kgotla meeting in Mahalapye that farmers committees would help farmers deal with agricultural issues easily rather than dealing with issues individually. 

Mr Molebatsi further said the ISPAAD programme had been upgraded to include the weeding component which he said would be done by giving farmers herbicides to apply in their fields. In total he said the government would spend over P20 000 in every farmer’s field.

“Row planting increses yields, farmers who row plant can expect to get 100 bags per hectare, since we are still learning in Mosolotshane a hectare can yield up to 85 bags, in general harvest from 5 hectares should be more than 200 bags,” he said.

He said this year’s yield was very high thus reducing the import bill of the country all thanks to ISPAAD noting that before ISPAAD came into existence the annual yield was 60 000 metric tonnes whereas since the advent of ISPAAD this year’s harvest is 200 000 metric tonnes.

“Since the food we produce is more than the food we consume the government is in the process of looking for alternative markets outside Botswana to sell our produce,” he said.

On the issue of LIMID, Mr Molebatsi said government had taken a decision to buy small stock directly from suppliers and hand them to qualifying beneficiaries to save beneficiaries from the inconvenience of seeking quotations from different suppliers.

Furthermore Mr Molebatsi said the government was concerned about the shortage of milk in the country since local dairy farms produce only five million litres of milk annually whereas the annual demand for milk in Botswana was 60 million litres. 

The government he said had taken a decision to purchase sexed semen which will be used to artificially inseminate local breed so that they produce 50% dairy cow breed.

Further artificial insemination he said would yield a 75% dairy cow breed. “A dairy cow produces 20 litres of milk per day, market prices of milk is P10 per litre so a dairy farmer will make P4000 per day and P120 000 per month, so get your cows ready to be inseminated,” he said. ENDS