26 May 2021

Assistant Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security, Ms Beauty Manake has called on all financial institutions and stakeholders in the agricultural sector to realign and reset their mandates to help grow and develop the sector.

Speaking during a tour of Pandamatenga farms on Monday, Ms Manake said government was committed to supporting local production in order to produce quality food for local and export consumption.

The commitment therefore calls for all stakeholders to reposition, assess and identify gaps in the value chains and industrialisation in the agricultural sector and align them to the nation’s economic diversification drive, she said.

She said harmonisation of policies by all stakeholders was instrumental for accelerated production and investment.

Ms Manake highlighted that local production of grains was still low and called for strong processes to be put in place to improve the situation. She further called on agricultural researchers to provide guidance to the local industry.

She noted that as researchers had produced a basic seed specifically for Botswana soils and pests; they should also work on producing fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides meant for Botswana and desist from depending on other countries as they have different soils.

In her presentation, the Chobe District Agricultural coordinator (DAC), Ms Seeng Manne said the district was doing well in terms of crop production.

She said apart from being the country’s food basket in terms of sorghum, the district through the Agriculture Research unit had produced a basic seed.

Ms Manne however lamented that regarding the livestock production, the district was not doing well as it is a Foot and Mouth red zone. She further stated that due to lack of slaughter houses and slabs, the district imports meat from other districts.

On other issues, Ms Manne said the major challenge to production was human-wildlife conflict and shortage of primary production inputs such as poultry feeds.

Special Economic Zone Authority (SEZA) director of Policy and Planning, Mr Jayson Sechele said Pandamatenga had been categorised as an integrated agriculture for cereal; agro-processing, water management solutions, food processing and storage facilities.

Mr Sechele said as such, a 96 500 hectare agro production zone land was identified, further explaining that the zone comprised all existing commercial farms of 44 500ha, 12 000ha of subsistence farms and 40 000ha of Agro Zambezi Project. Mr Sechele said the agro production zone would consequently comprise mainly of agro commercial production and other supportive agricultural land use activities which would promote agro production.

SEZA is currently carrying out a project to build 12 galvanised steel grain silos of 5 000 metric tonnes capacity to complement the existing six silos for storage of harvest form the existing farms.

He said the P160 million project started in March last year and was expected to be completed in August this year, but due to COVID-19 movement restrictions it would be delayed.

Commenting on the presentation, Ms Manake challenged Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) to take the issue of a slaughter slab as an opportunity.

She noted that the slaughter slab was not only about exporting meat but also vital as people in Chobe need to consume inspected meat. She applauded SEZA for the silos adding that they would help increase shelf life of produce. ENDS