Posted on October, 1, 2021 at 10:38 am
The government said on Monday that low output in agriculture sector backpedal efforts to attract industrial investment.
The Minister for Agriculture, Professor Adolf said recently in Dodoma that the low agricultural output plus inconsistence supply of agro-products put off foreign and domestic investors to invest in the sector.
"We cannot attract heavy investment in the agri-sector related industries if our productivity continues to be low, since we cannot feed them accordingly.
"Despite to have arable land, we fail to produce sufficient sunflower seeds to attract big investors... thus we are ending to rely on importation form edible cooking oil from Malaysia," Prof Mkenda said when launching vibrant agricultural technology distribution center in Nzuguni, Dodoma recently.
He gave an example of Ukrainian investors who wanted to set up a sunflower processing plant but failed to get a guarantee of receiving 100 tonnes of seeds a year.
The country, Prof Mkenda said, imports even starch despite having fertile land to produce cassava. The country production of cassava is between one and five tonnes per acre while in other countries is around 10 to 20 tonnes per acre.
"Investors are reluctant to come and invest in adding value agricultural products since farmers cannot guarantee supply of raw material," said Professor Mkenda.
The minister said to address the challenge the country farmers should farm productively and tasks institutes like Tanzania Agriculture Research Institute (TARI) to spending sleepiness nights to come out with high yields seeds.
He told TARI to come up with a best cotton seeds between 1000 and 2000 kilogramme per acre instead of the current 200kg and 350kg per acre.
Prof Mkenda said TARI has done a lot of research work in the sector and that it was important for farmers to apply the good seeds in their activities to improve the agricultural sector to bring productivity.
"We believe that if farmers uses these TARI study in agriculture, they will be producing more crops per acre to cushion the effect of price shocks," he said.
He also tasked the TARI Director General Dr Geoffrey Mkamilo to ensure that the seeds from TARI reach the farmers on time.
Source: Daily News