28 Oct 2020

Government remains steadfast in promoting sustainable food security and reducing the high food import bill, the Assistant Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Ms Beauty Manake has said.

Officiating at the Lucara mine, Africa accelerating virtual conference, Ms Manake said raising agriculture productivity was essential and potentially a source of ‘quick win’ if a holistic developmental approach is adopted.

 She said the ministry was in the process of undertaking an initiative to review the subsidy programmes to re-check their relevance and the level of impact they contributed to growing the sector.

 She noted that another on-going exercise was profiling the different categories of farmers to identify their needs and define where government intervention was required to enable the exponential growth of farming ventures in Botswana.

The food import bill, she said stands at P7.6 billion annually with agriculture production only contributing P1 billion. Ms Manake said this meant the bulk of the import bill was the agriculture value chain, something which she said called for investment in the industrialisation of food production.

“The bulk of the import bill comes from the commodities, thus indicating an urgent need for the value addition through the establishment of processing centres in the country. Most of the commodities are low hanging fruits of which their products can be increased within a short considerable amount of time,” she said.

 The assistant minister said the advent of COVID-19 had exposed the country’s vulnerability to food security matters, while cross border trade issues have demonstrated the need for import substitution on agricultural products and food system.

She said agricultural productivity was at the moment envisaged to diversify the country’s economy by contributing to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through the creation of quality employment, the building of middle-class economy bracket, wealth creation and the value chain as well as the building of resilient rural economies.

Ms Manake highlighted that Botswana was self-sufficient in beef production, chicken and table eggs. 

She therefore, emphasised the need for partnership with the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry to find export markets for frozen chicken and table eggs and facilitate small farmers with an organised and trusted markets.

Concerning grain production, Ms Manake noted that the sub-sector was not fully optimised as recently evidenced by the need to import maize and pulses due to quantities which were lower than minimum required levels in local production and strategic grain reserves.

She said the grain production subs-ector needed a transformation strategy that includes technology adoption and improved production systems alongside enhanced infrastructure and creation of commercial industries along the value chains to support production.

She indicated that farmers need to embrace the use of e-agriculture and adopt modern technology for precision farming and increment.

She cautioned that care had to be taken not to repeat past mistakes whereby the substantial resources and support that was provided for agricultural development through different programs and initiatives were not only input based rather than output focused. Ends