Law on agriculture crucial for growth

Dodoma. The government has been asked to enact an agriculture insurance law to help bolster the sector. This will give insurance cover to crops and enable farmers to access bank loans.

Debating ways of promoting lending in agriculture as the nation prepares to implement Phase Two of the Agricultural Sector Development Programme (ASDP-II), seminar facilitators underscored the need for government to throw its weight behind a comprehensive agenda that seeks to promote lending in Tanzania’s farming.

Debaters were discussing a presentation by the representative of the Tanzania Private Agricultural Sector Support (Pass), Mr Killo Lussewa, who said Parliament was well-placed to advise the government on the need to have a law that will increase lending in the sector and at the same time assure banks that money that goes into farming was not lost. He passionately called for soft bank loans to small-scale farmers.

Mr Lussewa who is also the Pass Director of Business Development praised the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (Sagcot) as Tanzania’s torch bearer of modernising farming and transforming peasants, said Sagcot has enviable experience in catalysing responsible agribusiness investments in Tanzania and raising smallholders’ livelihoods.

“This nation has witnessed big successes in areas served by Sagcot. Let’s hope the model will be replicated in other parts of the country,” Mr Lussewa told reporters. He added that Tanzania’s agriculture now needs money to pay top-level experts, secure best farming inputs so that productivity goes up.