29 Aug 2013

Debswana’s managing director, Mr Jim Gowans, says the agricultural show is an important event because with the right efforts and resources, agriculture can make a major contribution to the diversification of the economy and contribute to the nation’s food self-sufficiency.

Mr Gowans said the nation could not attain the Vision 2016 pillar of a prosperous, productive and innovative nation without a sustainable and diversified economy.

Officially opening this year’s national agricultural show on August 28, Mr Gowans said Botswana’s agriculture sector continued to play a pivotal role in the areas of food security, employment creation and provision of raw materials for other sectors. Mr Gowans said agriculture had the potential to contribute to rural development and poverty eradication in line with the Vision 2016 pillars of building a prosperous, productive and innovative nation as well as a compassionate, just and caring nation.

He said Botswana, like other countries in the world, had not been spared the adverse effects of climate change. The effects included extreme weather conditions and recurring droughts that led to losses in the agricultural production. Mr Gowans said other challenges included lack of infrastructure such as roads, market facilities, power, water and telecommunications. Animal and plant diseases as well as pests had been major challenges that posed a direct threat to human life, public health and to agriculture.

The fact that Botswana’s agriculture depended on the erratic and unreliable rainfall was also a limiting factor to the sector’s productivity.  He said he was pleased to note that as a mitigation measure for the problem of water shortage in agriculture, ministry obtained a grant from the African Development bank to fund study to establish the feasibility of using effluent water for irrigation in various localities in Botswana.

If found to be feasible, the project would go a long way in alleviating the water shortage problem in agriculture. He said there was a need for joint effort between government and private sector to contribute towards the improvement of agriculture.

He urged private companies in the country to emulate the few that contributed towards the development of agriculture. Mr Tshepo Masire, a farmer, encouraged people wanted to venture into farming to do so while there were citizen empowerment programmes that supported agriculture because initial investment could be prohibitive. Mr Masire applauded the government for improving infrastructure such as roads and mobile phones networks as that had improved the lives in farming areas. ENDS