Kawale: “Agriculture input loans are working, most farmers are commercializing.”
Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale says he is immensely impressed with visible and measurable strides farmers in the country are making in migrating from subsistence to commercial farming.
Kawale was speaking in the area of Traditional Authority Kabudula in Lilongwe following his tour of Agricultural Commercialisation Projects (AGCOM).
Under AGCOM, Kawale’s ministry is providing agricultural input loans, through National Economic Empowerment Fund (NEEF), to medium and large scale farmers with a goal of helping them to increase production and be self-reliant as established commercial farmers.
Kawale toured the farm of Senior chief Khongoni who is one of NEEF loan beneficiaries having obtained K15 Million for her maize, soya and groundnuts farming.
“We are implementing different programs to achieve food security, sustainability as well as nutrition as the country is moving towards achieving vision 2063 goals.
“We are running four programmes. The first one is affordable input program, where 1.5 Million beneficiaries are receiving two bags of fertilizer and in the second program, we are providing loans agricultural input loans through NEEF,” he said.
The Minister said the third one, government is providing loans to medium to large scale farmers using the mega farms and anchor farms.
“And then lastly, the fourth one, which is the biggest is agriculture commercialization, which is what we are witnessing today. Under these programs, our goal is first of all, to migrate people from subsistence farming, to commercial farming. The transition that we have put in place is whereby we are migrating people from aid so that they can go and get commercial loans,” he said.
The Ministry further believe that after transitioning from AIP to NEEF, another group of people who transition to make a Mega farm will receive more money to invest and increase production as well as mechanization.
It is believed that the bigger group of people are the ones who are migrating from AIP to NEEF and create mega farm where there is K500 Billion kwacha that has been reserved for people to access.
“If we are to take all these four programs, it means by the end of this year, we are assured that we will have enough crops in this country, both for domestic consumption as well as to do value addition and then export to get the much needed foreign exchange, ” he said
Kawale said: ” Our goal is to make sure that once and for all we deal decisively on the hunger issues in this country, so that we can be a hunger Free and become a net exporter of food”
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