Posted on September, 13, 2016 at 10:22 am
Opinion
The Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) has warned people to use food frugally to brace themselves for possible lean times as rains will be poor in the next three months and crops are likely to fail. The warning should be taken seriously taking into account the fact that rural Tanzanians widely use cereals to brew alcohol. It is also understood that agriculture relies on rainfall for water.
TMA has forecast below-normal rains in the specified period. It has advised farmers to prepare farms and seek advice from extension officers on proper land use and management and plant proper crop varieties, especially the drought resistant ones.
It also recommended necessary mitigation measures such as water harvesting and storage practices be taken in the hydro-power plants reservoirs because of the likely decreased water levels in rivers and lakes during that period.
Although the Famine Early Warning Systems Network recently quoted the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries as saying that an overall national maize surplus of 820,000 tonnes is anticipated during the 2016 marketing year, sustaining food supply across the country, we should not be complacent since the October-December rains normally account for 70 per cent of the country's cereal output. Most growers are smallholders who cultivate average farm sizes of between 0.9 and 3 hectares using traditional methods.
They lack capital and skills. They grow crops for subsistence. Many of them are unable to get fertilisers and quality seeds. When rains are favourable and harvests are bumper, markets are oversupplied and prices are depressed. The farmers have also been falling prey to dishonest crop buyers.
Yet agriculture accounts for 26.5 per cent of Tanzania's gross domestic product. Improving the sector means expanding the economy. In addition, about 87 per cent of the poor live in rural areas, and 75 per cent of rural income is earned from agriculture.
Tanzania short of 10,000 extension officers
But the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries has acknowledged that it has a shortage of 10,000 extension officers.
The National Network of Farmers Associations in Tanzania (Mviwata) has asked the government to support small-scale growers to enable them to increase yields and find reliable markets for their produce.
Mviwata urged the government to train facilitators to assist farmers to graduate from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture so as to reduce poverty. This is important considering the fact that 70 per cent of Tanzania's workforce is employed in agriculture. But why should our agriculture continue depend on rainfall 55 years after independence despite abundant water bodies? Are we immune to vagaries of weather?
President John Magufuli has warned district and regional commissioners against laxity in ensuring food security.
He has also aptly warned lazy people against depending on food handouts when famines occur.
Let's stop paying lip service with highfalutin jargons which have not borne any fruit. A National Nutrition Survey of 2015 that showed almost 35 per cent of children under-five were stunted hugely embarrassed a country that is endowed with arable land.
We should revolutionise agriculture. Irrigation holds the key to Tanzania's agricultural development.
We should talk the talk and walk the walk.
Source: The Citizen