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15 Mar 2023

Women in agri-businesses have resolved to join hands to contribute to value chains available in the agriculture sector.

The resolution was made during the commemoration of International Women’s Day organised by African Women Farmers Alliance (AWFA) in Rasesa over the weekend.

When sharing stories in agri-business, women agreed that collaboration was essential to explore value chains in agriculture sector.

They said most small farmers were women, their growth lied in supporting each other, especially in exploiting the value chains.

Officiating at the event, Lesotho based movement - Women in Farming representative, Ms Motselisi Peete stressed the importance of collaborating and sharing knowledge on resilience in farming.

She said small scale farming required resilience, especially where there were no modern farming implements and the luxury of insuring farm produce.

Ms Peete said Lesotho women small scale farmers had grown through collaborating in different skills, adding that agribusiness technologies had contributed immensely to their growth.

“New farming technologies are fundamental in the evolving agribusiness,” she stressed

Ms Peete said women should also partner to insure their produce so that they were not left in the lurch in times of natural disasters.

For her part, Bread Basket Value Chain representative who organises roundtables for poultry farm management, Ms Oarabile Ditedu emphasised the importance of networking and collaborating for backyard farmers to grow their businesses.

She said she had previously assisted 20 poultry backyard farmers, to reach commercial markets through collaborations.

 “The strategy to collaborate has helped to unlock opportunities to their growth as previously they saw their chickens as a source of sustenance from hand to mouth, apart from giving credit to people in their vicinity. 

Meanwhile, the founder of AWFA, Ms Nteba Sentsho stressed the need for collaboration for growth.

She said the movement was motivated by the need to provide platform for small farmers, especially women to network and share knowledge about how they could collaborate to grow each other’s businesses.

She said her garden,Matsieng, became resourceful during the COVID-19 pandemic as a horticultural market where small scale farmers were able to display their produce in one place for potential buyers and vendors.

She said the motivation behind gathering women was to provide platform for them to share insightful stories about their endurance in farming and to see how they could assist each other.

Gender based violence activist, Ms Neo Thema stressed the need for improving women’s empowerment and gender equality as a necessity to leverage avenues for investment in agriculture.

Like other speakers, she concurred that small scale farmers’ contribution were the mainstay economies of rural communities and that their produce were vital in value chains additions.

She said women should shun Gender Based Violence at all costs in order for them to grow.

Other topics discussed included life changing stories and motivation by different speakers in the field of piggery, innovation and digital technologies in farming, real life issues that affect women and agri-entrepreneurship.  Ends