The Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture has asked government to turn lip-service into action and implement policies which can make the country food sufficient.
The committee, which was on a crop assessment tour in Mangochi, also revealed that it is currently in the process to engage the Ministry of Finance and lobby for tripling of budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Agriculture as a long term solution to the country’s food shortage.
Speaking in an interview after the tour, the committee’s Chairperson Felix Jumbe said it is unfortunate that for a long time, government has been offering classroom talk regarding irrigation farming.
“The food situation in this country is worse than we initially thought. It is very painful that for a long time, we have been telling our local farmers that maize or indeed any other crop needs rains to grow instead of telling them the truth that crops need water to grow,” explained Jumbe.
Going forward, Jumbe said there is need for government to start preparing for maize importation as well as providing farm inputs to both commercial and subsistence farmers who have the capacity to engage in irrigation farming.
“It is not possible for us to continue relying on small scale farmers to do irrigation for us. We need commercial farmers to get support from government because what we want is for the country to have enough maize regardless of who is producing it,” he said.
He said that this year’s agriculture budgetary allocation should be tripled to accommodate resources for maize importation, disaster management and capital investment into irrigation farming because the country cannot depend on farmers with 0.5 hectares to feed the nation.
According to the first crop assessment results, the country will this year produce two percent less than what was produced last year when floods left at least 2.8 million Malawians hungry.
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