| Removal of input subsidies hurt farming | Send to a friend |
| Thursday, 02 September 2010 23:53 |
|
The Prime Minister, Mr Mizengo Pinda, has blamed the sharp decline in the country of agriculture productivity in the country to the abolition of input subsidies in the 1980’s. As a result, Mr Pinda told a forum on developing Africa’s agriculture organised by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) here that “fertiliser consumption dropped from 142,676 metric tonnes in 1991/92 to 77,557 metric tonnes in 2002/03.” In order to reverse the trend, he said, the government has launched a new initiative under which it introduced a voucher scheme in 2005/06 which has led to the increased use of fertilisers to over 260,000 metric tonnes in 2009/10. “At the same time, private business investments in agricultural inputs have expanded. Currently, there are 13 fertiliser companies, 25 seed companies and more than 3,000 rural agro-dealers serving more than two million smallholder farmers,” Mr Pinda said, adding that the programme started with only 700,000 farmers in 2005/2006. He said through AGRA and the financial sector deepening trust, an innovative loan guarantee scheme had been established and made available a total of $5 million (about Sh7 billion) to agro-dealers by the National MicroFinance Bank (NMB). Last year, Tanzania launched the Agriculture First initiative, a public private partnership aimed at modernising agriculture and attaining economic transformation for sustained poverty reduction. In line with this, Mr Pinda said the government had also initiated the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) which brings together investments and private sector innovations to mobilise the huge agricultural potential of the Southern Highlands into commercially viable agricultural production clusters of small, medium and large scale enterprises. About 700,000 farmers in the Southern Highlands grouped under the Agriculture First initiative produced about 5 million tonnes of maize last year. “We managed to produce adequate food for Tanzanians, despite serious drought that affected about one third of the country. During the past five years more than 200,000 metric tonnes of food aid mostly maize were distributed to food deficit areas within Tanzania from the National Strategic Grain Reserve,” he added. He said, the goal for the new initiative is to reach 2.5 million farmers and we are well on the way to achieving this. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
