President Jakaya Kikwete.
THE government has reiterated the need
to train smallholder farmers, who constitute over 70 per cent of
Tanzania’s agriculture sector, in modern farming crop husbandry
practices with access to credit facilities and markets for their produce
if food insecurity and poverty are to be tamed.
President Jakaya Kikwete said in Dar es
Salaam when opening the two-day Agribusiness East Africa conference that
under Southern Agriculture Growth Corridor of Tanzania, the focus is on
improvement of productivity of smallholder farmers.
Citing an example of Kilombero
Plantation Limited, which has been allocated 10,000 hectares of land
where British and American largescale commercial rice producers are
working with smallholder paddy rice farmers, President Kikwete said the
model has worked so well such that some African countries are borrowing a
leaf from it.
“Under SAGCOT, smallholder farmers
working in partnership with large scale farmers have successfully
managed to increase rice yields per acre from two metric tons to eight
tons,” Mr Kikwete told the gathering of over 300 agroexperts, company
executives, farmers and policy makers.
Kilombero Plantation Limited is a
private company which is a subsidiary of British Agrica Tanzania Limited
running a 10,000 hectares of rice farm in Kilombero district of
Morogoro region since 2009 which emanated from a United Nations
Development Programme hatched Africa Training and Management Services
(AMSCO) project.
Under the project, key undertakings
included development of 5,000ha of rice farming, construction of
cleaning, drying, milling, and storage facilities to handle high
production volumes with employment of over 400 people directly.
“With this partnership, Kilombero
Plantation is now the largest rice producer in East Africa,” Kikwete
pointed out saying his government is also targeting to improve
productivity of smallholder farmers under Kilimo Kwanza blue print.
SAGCOT involves five regions of Iringa, Mbeya, Morogoro, Rukwa and Ruvuma regions which are the country’s bread basket.
Under the programme, farmers are trained
by extension officers on best crop and animal husbandry practices,
supplied with agro-inputs such as fertilizer and hybrid seeds, given
access to credit facility and reliable markets.
With production of food at 118 per cent
of the country’s needs largely due to Agriculture Sector Development
Programme (ASDP), the president said the target is to produce enough for
the EA market. “In order to succeed we also need to incorporate the
private sector,” he stressed.
Earlier, Agriculture, Food Security and
Cooperatives Minister Christopher Chiza and Agriculture Council of
Tanzania (ACT) Chairman Dr Yussuf Sinare said the innovation, which
targets smallholder farmers, is key to improving the agriculture sector.
Engineer Chiza said to realize the goal
of having a middle income economy by 2025, the government has singled
out agriculture as a sector requiring urgent attention hence part of the
Big Results Now initiative.
“One of the things we are focusing on is
how a smallholder farmer can be included in a production value chain
without compromising his interests,” Eng. Chiza noted saying his
ministry and SAGCOT partners are working towards putting innovations
into action.
In a vote of thanks, Dr Sinare paid
tribute to the government for undertaking massive mechanization of the
country agriculture sector. “For the first time, I have seen a showroom
of tractors in Dar es Salaam.”