04 Mar 2014

Farmers in Tonota east have been applauded for heeding the government’s call to divert from the traditional broadcast to row planting.

The agricultural technical assistant for the region, Mr Molebi Bathobakae praised the farmers during a tour of fields in the area recently. He said this year there was an increase in the number of hectors planted using the method.

Mr Bathobakae noted that last year, they had 2 500 hectors ploughed and from the number, only 500 hectors were row planted. This year, the number had tripled, he said.

He said out of 2 600 hectors ploughed this year, row planting was used in 1 475 of them. He said this was an indication that farmers were now accepting the benefits of row planting.

He nonetheless acknowledged concerns from farmers who could not to do row planting because tractor owners took long to assist them. He advised farmers that they could still do row planting using animal power. 

Two farmers managed to produce the desired results using donkeys, he said. “To have such results of using domesticated animals, we had to do samples of the practice on some fields and it has produced the results we wanted,” he said.

Meanwhile, the agricultural scientific officer, Mr Itumeleng Malebang encouraged farmers to cultivate their fields said after harvesting their crop.

He explained would help farmers to fight pests and weeds as well as preserve the moisture during the rainy season, as they will only have to plant seeds without having to tilt the soil.

Mr Malebang encouraged tractor owners to buy improved planters with proper adjustments to accommodate the different sizes of seeds because the majority of planters currently used werenot accommodative to different seeds. ENDS