18 Sep 2018

Southern District Council chairperson, Mr Alec Seametso, has expressed concern that few farmers have registered for inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and herbicides. 

He relayed the message at commencement of a full council meeting in Kanye on September 17. 

Registration for the 2018/19 ploughing season came to an end on June 30, 2018, according the chairperson.

“Only 11 944 farmers registered for seeds acquisition, 7 457 fertilizers while 1540 registered for herbicides acquisition,” he said. 

That, he said, left authorities with no option but to urge farmers to continue to register for inputs even though the deadline for registration had elapsed.

That withstanding, the council chairperson announced that there had been a marked progress in the payment of farmers for the 2017/18 farming season under the ISPAAD programme. 

Full council learnt that to date, the district was at 99 per cent in terms of payments as a total of P52.2 million had been paid out to 21 130 farmers for both planting and harrowing.

On the 2017/18 ploughing season, Mr Seametso told fellow councillors that while production data was still being collected, a total of 44470.40 metric tons of cereal crops had been harvested with commercial farmers consisting 64.5 per cent.

Emerging farmers according to Mr Seametso constitutes 7.1 per cent while subsistence farmers make up only 28.4 per cent of the total cereal production harvested. 

Inspite of low production, Councilor Seametso remained hopeful that the little harvest would have a positive impact on food security at household levels.

On animals, Mr Seametso expressed concern that inspite of the importance of ear tagging livestock, majority of farmers were still reluctant to undertake the exercise.

“Out of 24 771 cattle in the district, only 129 524 cattle are identifiable by either bolus or ear tags," he said, thus urging farmers to come forward to collect vaccines from veterinary offices and vaccinate their cattle for Anthrax and Quarter Evil. ENDS