25 Jul 2016

Trade fairs give people an opportunity to market, showcase and sell their products and services.

Officiating at the Kgatleng District Show and Trade Fair on June 23 under the theme: Practicing smart agriculture to combat the effects of global change,” a senior faculty manager at Limkokwing University of Creative Arts and Technology,   Ms Letlhogonolo Paulo said the fair also came at an opportune time for discussion and dialogue on issues of smart agriculture and global changes.

She said global changes were the most severe constraints to agricultural development in Botswana and across the world.

Because of global changes, Ms Paulo said agriculture in Botswana should undergo significant productivity improvements to meet the combined challenges of population growth and climate change as the country makes initiatives to diversify its mineral –led economy from non-renewable resources to renewable resources.

“For us to meet the growing and interconnected challenges of food insecurity and climate change, there is need for Botswana to undergo significant transformation, recent projections suggest global population will grow from the current 7 billion to more than 9 billon people in 2050,” said Ms Paulo.

She said ensuring adequate food supplies in the region would require faster growth in agricultural output, adding that such improvements involved the use of climate-smart agriculture approaches to agricultural policy making in Botswana.

She noted that “the approach emphasises on the use of farming techniques that increase yields, reduce vulnerability to climate change and reduce greenhouse emissions, bearing in mind the erratic nature of rainfall and the drought prone nature of the Botswana environment.”

Ms Paulo also noted that agriculture remains vital to the economies of most African countries including Botswana, adding that its development was significant for food security and poverty reduction and employment creation in Botswana and beyond.

She noted that the Food Agricultural Organisation (FAO) envisages smart agriculture as an approach to help guide actions to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively and sustainably support the development and food security under a changing climate.

The senior faculty manager explained that smart agriculture does not mean coming up with new production systems, but rather means identifying which production systems and institutions were best suited to respond to the challenges of climate change for specific locations, and to maintain and enhance the capacity of agriculture to support food security in a sustainable way.

For his part, Kgatleng Show and Trade Fair chairperson, Mr Naphtali Kaeparura said they saw it fit to bring back the show after 15 years of absence, adding that their main aim was to have the show as an annual event and further develop it into a high profile occasion which would attract people from all the corners of the country.

He said they were facing challenges such as income and vandalism of equipment, noting that those were the two problems that hindered them most to have the trade fair. Ends