18 Jul 2018

Tractor owners and farmers have been reminded that they are the driving force in the mission to feed Batswana and have sufficient food in the country.

The reminder was made by Ms Phumulani Glalah, assistant coordinator under the office of Integrated Support for Programme for Arable Agricultural Development (ISPAAD) during the ISPAAD preparatory meeting to map the way forward for the 2018/19 ploughing season held in Kasane recently.

She said it was impossible for the government to win the fight against importing food without the input of other stakeholders like farmers and tractor owners.

Ms Glalah said the farmers and tractor owners were the ones who carried out the ploughing activity, noting that when ISPAAD started in 2008, government had only injected P58 million into the programme and the budget had since expanded to P700 million in a season because of the increasing number of participants, which was now around 80 000.

She said government was concerned that the country was still importing food, adding that government wanted to see growth, with farmers graduating from being subsistence to commercial.

She said this was the main reason government was spending such huge amounts of money to commercialise and mechanise the agricultural sector.

Ms Glalah reminded farmers to always use the right machinery and bear in mind that they served the nation.

She said before each ploughing season started, tractor operators should be registered, trained and awarded certificates.

She warned farmers from engaging in fraudulent activities because they would be cheating their own government.

The official also took the opportunity to apologise to farmers for some late payments, saying one of the reasons that led to the problem was the upgrading of the Government Accounting and Budgeting System (GABS).

She also advised tractor owners not to plough for people and let the list pile up without submitting for payment, noting that it was one of the causes of late payments.

For his part, the agriculture engineer at the Department of Crop Production in Kasane, Mr Tiro Diphofu advised farmers to practice smart farming, which was more concerned with taking care of the environment.

He said sometimes crop rotation could help them deal with pests instead of using chemicals, urging them to use organic fertilisers rather than other chemicals, which were not environmentally friendly as they could contribute to global warming. Ends