17 Feb 2022

Aspiring and upcoming young farmers have been advised to embrace and join farmers associations in their localities to make it easier for them to address their issues as an entity.

This was said by chairperson of Letlhabile Young Farmers Southern Association Mr Othusitse Bakoko during a climate change workshop in Good Hope on Monday.

He said when people of common interests grouped themselves, it was much easier for policy makers to take their concerns on board.

Mr Bakoko shared that it was through their association that they managed to grow and be recognised regionally and internationally.

He said this had even helped them to get assistance from private institutions in the form of funding especially during the ploughing season.

He pointed out that entities such as National Development Bank encouraged and easily helped associations as compared to individuals.

Furthermore he said an association in its nature encouraged healthy competition as members competed amongst themselves thereby yielding positive results as everyone strived to be the best.

Mr Bakoko said members shared challenges and how to overcome them including marketing the products which was mostly done through members of the association thus cutting costs and saving time.

Ms Kamogelo Thumankwe of Botswana climate change network concurred with Mr Bakoko that working in groups made it easy for them to reach  many people in a short space of time. She gave an example of youth in the Nata-Gweta area who through UNDP, were able to construct a hydroponic irrigation system to address water shortage in their area.

She said government was recognising the need to mainstream gender into development planning and to ensure that climate change response measures were gender sensitive.

Ms Thumankwe said this would be achieved by adopting strategies targeted at increasing resilience of most vulnerable groups such as women, children and disabled people through provision of technologies, finance and capacity building.

The workshop participants,  who included young farmers, students, beneficiaries of Limid and those who benefitted from gender affairs, associations in the locality and other marginalised groups, aimed at sharing information about the impact of climate change in Botswana. ENDS