Farm input |
This was revealed
early in the week by the deputy minister for Agriculture, Irrigation and
Cooperatives, Mr William Ole Nasha, in Vwawa Town, Mbozi District, when
launching a project on involving youth in agriculture and livestock
sectors.
The
six-year-project, which started in 2016 under the financing of the
Heifer International Organisation, will cover Mbeya, Njombe, Iringa and
Songwe regions up until 2021.
"In implementing
this, we will start with two kinds of fertilizers, DAP and Urea, which
are widely used. A farmer will purchase them as much as he likes
contrary to input subsidy vouchers that enabled the farmer to get only a
bag of fertilizer," he said.
He said the
programme had also the advantage of placing orders for fuels and would
not give a chance to racketeers to hike prices.
According to Songwe RC Chiku Galawa, her region has 24,266 households that engage in agriculture.
She said a total of
3,543,924 hectares are under cultivation, hence over 70,000 tonnes of
fertilizers are needed. Previously farmers only got 4 per cent of
subsidy vouchers.
The RC clarified
that a big section of farmers in the region were using fertilizers,
adding that subsidies were not enough to attain production goals.
For his part, the
Mbozi MP, Mr Pascal Haonga, explained that groups of youth failed to
engage in farming because of exorbitant prices of inputs.
A farmer, Hamisi
Hankungwe from Wellu Village, said the decision was timely as they did
not benefit from the voucher system. "The government should supervise
well this plan of indicative prices so that it can benefit the targeted
group," he said.
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