02 Sep 2020

The government needs to come up with a national policy for the country to work towards being self-sufficient in food production, Sefhare-Ramokgonami Member of Parliament (MP), Dr Kesitegile Gobotswana has said.

Contributing to the debate on the  National Development Plan  11 (NDP 11) Mid-Term Review Economy and Employment Sector ministries presentation, Dr Gobotswang said there should be a clear distinction between the concepts of food security and food self-sufficiency.

He said while opposition parties had historically called for Botswana to invest in ensuring that the country was able to produce sufficient food to meet its national need, the governing Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) had preferred to invest national wealth to purchase food elsewhere.

Dr Gobotswana said in 1991, the government had come up with a food security plan, which then suggested that Botswana did not have comparative advantage in food production but would rather have to invest in food imports.

But Dr Gobotswana said irrigation-based agriculture was practically feasible in the country. He also called on government to invest in nutrition sensitive agricultural production, which he said would improve the quality of lives of Batswana as they would be fed food that is high in nutrition and aid in disease prevention.

He also called for better road network to connect villages in his constituency, and for the government to work on ensuring that Botswana was able to access and make good use of the Limpopo river waters for the purposes of farming and tourism in his constituency.

Dr Gobotswang called for brigades to be empowered to be self-sufficient, as they were originally intended to be by the Brigades movement founder, the late Mr Patrick van Rensburg, as part of his Education with Production philosophy. Ends