09 Oct 2013

The deputy director in the Department of Agricultural Research in the Ministry of Agriculture has said their Gaborone research laboratory is now functional.

Officially opening the department’s stakeholder consultative workshop in Maun on October 8, Ms Balibi Makoba said they had managed to solicit funds from government to buy resources that will be used to operate the laboratory and help farmers countrywide.

“We have also been given money to buy a machine that cleans seeds,” she said. Ms Makoba indicated that as a research institution, they needed to play an effective role in animal and crop production by taking the right services to Batswana.

Ms Makoba said there was need for all the departments under the ministry to strive for a common goal. “Our objectives should be uniform and the workforce at the district level should be enhanced to better achieve our overall mandate of achieving food security for Botswana,” she said.

She further said even though the country was experiencing budget cuts, departments within the ministry and other stakeholders should use the little that they had by producing more. “We need to put our heads together, engage, plan together and set priority areas since we have limited resources,” she said.

She also indicated that public private partnerships (PPPs) were important because government could not achieve everything on its own. “For example, my department is responsible for providing seeds to Batswana every year for ploughing and without public private partnerships, this would not be possible,” said Ms Makoba.

For her part, Ms Agatha Molefe, the crop production officer in the department said the objective of the workshop was to inform Ngamiland farmers on research done on animal and crop production.

“We want to inform you on what is being done regarding research on animal and crop production and what you farmers will do with that research,” she said. She indicated that such workshops were important because they informed ministry officials on what case studies to research on.

“We want to do research that is demand driven and incorporate what farmers and other stakeholders want because we want to improve agriculture in this country,” she said.

Meanwhile, livestock farmers at the workshop called on the department to help them with the communal grazing area issue. They indicated that developments such as mines and tourism activities are being prioritized over land that has been reserved as communal grazing areas, hence they do not have land to graze their livestock.

Furthermore, they also called on officials to increase education on fodder production so that Batswana get involved with the business and desist from having to buy outside, which turns out to be expensive.

Other farmers trading in crop production complained to the ministry’s officials about the unavailability of machinery within Botswana. Ends