Posted on January, 30, 2019 at 09:11 am
THE Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) has reaffirmed its commitment to train farmers on modern farming, livestock keeping and poultry farming in a move aimed at achieving the middle income and industrial economy by 2025.
Speaking during the agricultural stakeholders meeting held Unguja town recently, the SAGCOT Chief Executive Officer, Geoffrey Kirenga urged Zanzibaris to shun regular farming and instead embark on modern farming.
“Zanzibar has no reason whatsoever to import food whereas the environment is conducive for farming and livestock keeping, what matters for now is readiness to learn on livestock keeping and modern farming,” he said.
Kirenga further said that for many years Zanzibar has incurred costs for importing food particularly chicken meat from abroad, something that could easily reversed through motivating people to embark on commercial farming.
“The chicken market is plenty here and people should use this opportunity to invest on poultry farming, by so doing people standards of living will rise and this will lead into economic growth,” he said.
He called on the people who have already benefited from trainings on poultry farming to practice in a bid to go modern and increase productivity.
“Silverlands Tanzania has invested heavily on the production of poultry food in the SAGCOT zone, therefore we will continue to collaborate in educating farmers on modern farming,” he said.
He added that in the partnership with Silverlands Tanzania SAGCOT has a major task of insuring that there is enough poultry feeds, adding training on modern farming has been conducted in Iringa, Njombe and Mbeya regions where major achievements had been registered.
“We also want Zanzibar to shun over dependence on ordering chicken from abroad and embark on modern poultry farming, this is key in employment creation,” he said.
The Silverlands Tanzania marketing manager, Ahmed Abdulrahman said his company was committed to train more poultry farmers in a bid to expand the scope of production.
“We will make sure that all the important needs of farmers are met including supply of chicks, chicken feeds and medicines,” he said.
Source: IPP Media