Zambian Agriculture – The Potential Is There!

The Zambian agriculture sector is poised for good things to come in the future! Why is this?

The Zambian government has taken a deliberate policy to shift the economic base away from mining to agriculture and Tourism. The stream lined policy on agriculture has seen the country being self sufficient in its most important and staple food, maize, for a couple of years now, up to August 2009.

And this is for a good reason. Just imagine the agriculture industry in Zambia accounts for a sizable portion of the GDP!

Currently the government under the Fertilizer support Program provides input to farmers.

However, the late distribution of agriculture inputs like fertilize and seed, and accessing agricultural finance may have a negative impact.

However, one factor that contributes immensely to maize production is rainfall, since the produce is usually determined by the rainfall pattern.

Also the government is playing its part. Agriculture minister Dr. Chituwo advised farmers at Chinenke irrigation project in Mbala on 25th August 2009 to adopt intensive conservation farming in order to increase the their yields from 1.5 metric tones per hectare to 3 metric tones. He said this would be possible with the anticipated support which will come from the government.

The Zambian agriculture sector has enormous potential in export earnings. Agricultural products have a huge market across the African continent. In fact Zambia has unimaginable opportunities for food production to feed the entire sub region.

For example, Zambia could be self-sufficient in rice production. The year 2009 saw a bumper harvest of rice in Western province - known as Mongu rice - to such an extent that farmers were struggling to sell it.

Challenges in the marketing of maize

80 percent of Zambia’s population is dependent on agriculture. The majority of farmers are small scale. And most of these farmers grow maize for their livelihood.

But here are the problems in the marketing and selling of the commodity. Each year the government sets aside billions of kwacha for the purchase of the maize, but the amounts are not usually adequate.

For example, in the 2009 marketing season, the government set aside 110,000 metric tones of maize valued at K100 billion. But the actual situation on the ground was that the estimated national harvest was going to be 1.8 million metric tones.

This forces the country’s small scale farmers to sell the surplus to the private sector and briefcase buyers below the recommended floor price of K 65,000 (in year 2009) for a 50 kg bag.

In order to increase yield in this area, government should continue to source additional funds so that all surplus maize produced by small scale farmers should be bought, in this way it will be a big boost to all farmers making about 99 percent of Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU).

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