Several Members of Parliament (MPs) who have so far contributed to debate on President Peter Mutharika\u2019s latest State of the Nation Address have once again described last season\u2019s Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp) as one of the worst ever.<\/p>\n
In his address, Mutharika praised the performance of the programme in the last growing season, saying key reforms such as increasing private sector participation and fixing the value of fertiliser coupons at K15,000 ensured efficiency and effectiveness.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Speaker, Sir, the government will continue with implementation of Fisp reforms to ensure that the programme is delivered efficiently by specifically strengthening private sector participation in supply, delivery and retailing of inputs across the country,\u201d Mutharika said.<\/p>\n
But some stakeholders such as the Civil Society Agriculture Network and the Farmers Union of Malawi have frequently lamented what they have called irregularities in the programme.<\/p>\n
In their responses to the Sona on Tuesday, MPs for Salima Central, Chikwawa West and Dedza North\u2014Felix Jumbe, Kennedy Maluwa and Patrick Chilondola, in that order\u2014were among those who argued that crop yields this year would have been higher had Fisp been properly organised.<\/p>\n
Jumbe said the increase in crop yield this year should also be attributed to farmers\u2019 resilience and dedication.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunger haunted this country for the past two years, but this year we are going to experience a rise in crop yield because of good rains and farmers\u2019 hard-work. But we must be honest that last year\u2019s Fisp was the worst ever as far as management was concerned.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut because of farmers\u2019 hard-work we are having over 30 percent of an increase in crop yield as compared to last year\u2019s. We need to continue with Fisp reforms because the programme is beneficial,\u201d Jumbe said.<\/p>\n
Maluwa also argued that management of Fisp needs to improve so that farmers should benefit from the programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost farmers failed to access the inputs because the private traders did not reach out to every part of the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The sentiments were reiterated by Chilondola who said the State grain trader, the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc), should be considered in the management of Fisp.<\/p>\n
He also argued that it was not enough for the programme to target \u201conly\u201d 900,000 farmers when the country\u2019s economy is agro-based.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike some of the private traders who only reach towns and big trading centres, Admarc has depots in several remote places where farmers can easily access the inputs. Otherwise, it does not make sense to say we are targeting a certain number of farmers when some of them are not benefiting from the programme,\u201d Chilondola said.<\/p>\n
Several other MPs who contributed to the debate put their weight behind Admarc\u2019s participation in Fisp apparently because the increase in the number of private players in the programme resulted into unequal distribution of the agriculture inputs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several Members of Parliament (MPs) who have so far contributed to debate on President Peter Mutharika\u2019s latest State of the Nation Address have once again described last season\u2019s Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp) as one of the worst ever. In his address, Mutharika praised the performance of the programme in the last growing season, saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46205,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46204\/revisions\/46205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}