{"id":70232,"date":"2018-10-11T11:17:32","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T09:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=70232"},"modified":"2018-10-11T11:17:33","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T09:17:33","slug":"farmers-challenged-on-business-efficiency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/10\/11\/farmers-challenged-on-business-efficiency\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers challenged on business efficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Chimwemwe Mangazi: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_70233\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-70233\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/sheila-keino.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-70233\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/sheila-keino-300x267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/sheila-keino-300x267.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/sheila-keino.jpg 410w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-70233\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">KEINO\u2014 We are looking at access to inputs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Smallholder farmers in the country have been urged to operate in corporatives to access finance and markets easily.<\/p>\n<p>This would also strengthen production efficiency and profitability.<\/p>\n<p>African Fertilisers and Agribusiness Partnerships (Afap)-Malawi Country Director Malawi, Sheila Keino, made the call during the \u2018Building Value Chain Linkages for Increased Agricultural Productivity\u2019 forum in Lilongwe on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Keino said there is a gap between farmers and players from the private sector, is leading to exploitation of farmers by middlemen.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cWe are looking at access to inputs such as fertiliser, seeds, crop protection access to finance, access to insurance, markets, diversification, mechanisation and the entire value chain and that is why we have brought financial institutions who are able to give loans to farmers as little as K10, 000 and as much as K1, 000. 000. We even have the World Bank because we understand that access to finance remains a challenge in Malawi,\u201d<\/em> Keino said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Farmers Union of Malawi Chief Executive Officer, Prince Kapondamgaga, said access to finance remains a challenge among small scale farmers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cAs of now we are not very clear on the institutional arrangements that will be established to run this bank and also we don\u2019t know how much funds will be invested in this bank to run it so I don\u2019t think we are at a stage where the government has shared information,\u201d<\/em> Kapondamgaga said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Industry Trade and Tourism, Ken Ndala, commended Afap for the initiative.<\/p>\n<p>He said the initiative is complementing the government\u2019s initiative of improving agriculture sector\u2019s input to the economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Chimwemwe Mangazi: Smallholder farmers in the country have been urged to operate in corporatives to access finance and markets easily. This would also strengthen production efficiency and profitability. African Fertilisers and Agribusiness Partnerships (Afap)-Malawi Country Director Malawi, Sheila Keino, made the call during the \u2018Building Value Chain Linkages for Increased Agricultural Productivity\u2019 forum in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70232","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\/70232","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=70232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70234,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70232\/revisions\/70234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}