Mosisedi to ease food inflation pressure
Katlego Isaacs | Wednesday May 4, 2022 06:00
Mosisedi, named after the two Southern District villages the association is straddled between—Mosi and Sedibeng—is a collection of 18 farms over a 10,000-hectare area dedicated to arable farming that has been heavily hit by the effects of inflation.
Mosisedi chair, Kagiso Monkge recently told journalist that multiple international pressures have dramatically inflated the cost of large scale farming production forcing local farmers to shift the cost burden onto consumers. The association, however, has no intention to have its end consumers bear the full burden of inflation without doing everything they can to delay the rising costs of staple crops. “Food security is not just about the availability of food, it’s also about the affordability,” Monkge said. “As farmers, we plan to employ more efficient methods that help to lower our input costs while increasing our yield output," he said. “One of the challenges we have when it comes to increasing our yield output is moisture, we are a semi-arid country and we often have problems with moisture. So what we do is practice techniques like minimal tillage. Techniques like this help us store, conserve, and use less water generally," Monkge informed.
However, despite this ambitious determination, Monkge stated he expects further rising food costs due to increased prices along the supply chain that farmers have little to no control over. He noted that the rising costs along the supply chain can be attributed to Botswana not locally producing the inputs that farmers need to produce their crops, leaving the nation’s farming performance at the mercy of international suppliers.
“I always go back to the issue of self-reliance, we need strategies in place that will allow us to have inputs when we need them. The best way to do that is to produce those inputs locally,” he said. “This year we expect our outputs to be worse than last year, indications are there that the prices of fertilizers are going to shoot up again. We’ve already seen prices of fuel go up and I'm doubtful this will be the last increase this year. This is all because we don’t have control over the production of those inputs,” he added. Concurring with Monkge, one of the farm owners within Mosidedi, Gobona Mapitse, agreed that Botswana is overly reliant on its neighbours for farming inputs but less because of a lack of production of inputs but rather a lack of rainfall. “Many of us have hit blanks trying to find water here on our farms, so we don’t have enough water to irrigate. If you don’t have enough water, there is no way you can have a lot of annual production. ”We have land, but it’s dry land. When the rain goes we can only fold our arms. If there was sufficient water we would produce much more. There is a lot of opportunity if we had water because the land is there.”
However, Mapitse’s acceptance of the realities of Botswana’s climate has not deterred her determination to be a successful farmer.
“We still have to try with the little that we have. Maybe be a little innovative, and see what we can plant that requires minimal water,” she said.
Thankfully, Seed Co offers Mosisedi farmers hybrid seeds adapted to the environment of Botswana allowing a higher average annual crop output for the participating farmers. Agronomist at Seed Co. Group, Dialwa Kenatshele, expressed that Seed Co is committed to providing farmers with seeds that allow them to maximise their yields regardless of the harsh growing conditions of Botswana. “We supply hybrid seeds to farmers, not only hybrid seeds but also the best genetically modified seeds for the conditions of Botswana.
Before we have any seed go into the ground we test it to adapt to the conditions of Botswana,” Mapitse said. “Currently here in Mosisedi, most farmers use our SE-506 yellow variety maize seeds, which is a very good variety in terms of drought tolerance. Using this variety, our farmers have been able to yield four to six tonnes at harvest annually. Which is a very commendable harvest,” she said. Mapitse added that Seed Co is continually innovating its seed varieties with various experiments in the hopes that they can dramatically increase the yield of any given crop over the same land area with the same inputs; this would theoretically reduce costs of production and allow farmers to sell crops at cheaper costs to consumers.