Temo Letlotlo dangles cash rewards for top farmers
Pauline Dikuelo - Mbongeni Mguni | Monday November 13, 2023 06:00
Under the Mmoko rewards package, grading of crops will be done by extension officers and the package will be done in the form of reward voucher items contextualised to the specific needs of farmers.
The new programme kicks in this season to replace ISPAAD, the old agriculture inputs programme which Agriculture Ministry officials recently revealed had outputs averaging just 47% of the financial input by government over the 15 years of its existence.
Between 2008 and this year, government pumped billions of Pula into ISPAAD, a figure that in the latter years of the programme averaged P600 million per season. Audits into ISPAAD however showed not only widespread illicit conduct and exploitation of the system, but that the outputs desired by government were not monitored or met each season. As a result, senior agriculture ministry officials now concede that the hundreds of millions of pula spent annually on ISPAAD mostly went to waste, while the perennial droughts in the past decade meant that government coughed up even more millions on drought relief measures.
The Temo Letlotlo guidelines indicate that government is prioritising output in the new agriculture programme, with the Mmoko rewards package designed to dangle a carrot for farmers.
“Mmoko Reward Package is the performance-based reward given to farmers in recognition of their productivity and quality of produce,” the guidelines published recently read. “It is a reward given to farmers who meet the yield target and quality of the priority crops. “The reward package is in the form of reward voucher items contextualised to the specific needs of farmers. “The incentive will be applicable only if the farmer or cluster has met their yearly yield targets, which varies depending on the crop planted and the farmer category.”
Temo Letlotlo has identified 13 priority crops with annual targets which are specific to the farmer category, while the rewards are only open to a range that starts with small and ends at large scale farmers. The priority crops include sorghum, maize, millet, mung bean, groundnuts, sunflower, safflower, cowpeas, sugar beans, wheat, soya bean, fodder and rice.
Temo Letlotlo identifies micro scale farmers as those who cultivate between one and four hectares of land with estimated production of between 0.6 to six tons and a monthly income less than P2, 500.
The small scale farmer cultivates 1 to 16 hectares of land with estimated production between 1.2 tons to 6.4 tonnes while the medium scale farmer cultivates 16.1 hectares of land with estimated production of between 28.98 tons to 675 tons.
Large scale farmers cultivate 150.1 to 500 hectares of land with estimated production between 375.25 tons to 2,500 tons annually.
Temo Letlotlo is the government’s latest effort to boost household as well as national agricultural production and food security. The programme comes after a long list of policy interventions all of which have cost billions of Pula over the years and failed to lift both production and food security.
From the Arable Lands Development Programme or ALDEP of the 1970s, to the National Agriculture Policy of the 1990s to ISPAAD in 2008, a combination of increasingly weak rainfall, rising climate change, poor monitoring and evaluation have conspired to hamstring the various policy interventions. The situation has been worsened by the fact that the burden and risk involved in many of these interventions has been largely carried by government rather than the beneficiaries, thus limiting buy-in.
Mosisedi Commercial Farmers Association secretary, Duncan Ramooki, told Mmegi Temo Letlotlo was a step in the right direction for improved national production.
“The new programme takes away that trend or habit of ‘atlhama ke go jese’ and we have to also take responsibility,” he said on Thursday. “The smaller scale farmers previously were excluded from seasonal loans but now they will also participate, which helps because production costs are high.”
Under Temo Letlotlo, seasonal loans will be offered from the National Development Bank (NDB) at P8,300 per hectare and repaid at prime rate, the lowest interest rate in the market.
“If you are putting 100 hectares, that will qualify you for P830,000 and they have said that type of money doesn’t require security and you can get it from the NDB. “Your harvest will then go to the marketing board who will pay NDB.”
Ramooki said while commercial farmers were still waiting for further details of the new programme, Temo Letlotlo held the potential of finally scoring success where numerous other policies have failed since Independence.
“I think with the way it has been presented, it appears it will help us,” he told Mmegi. “With the other programmes, there was no monitoring. “People were taking fertiliser and other inputs and using them without anyone monitoring that. “Temo Letlotlo will even incorporate private balimisi (extension officers) who will manage areas and give reports, which will help with this phenomenon of people who claim to be farmers but sit all day in the office. “The new programme makes people care about their input and worry about production and output.”
Local farmer, Ododobane Mafhoko, said Temo Letlotlo is promising but added that it has a lot of gaps as it should have included the whole farming value chain rather than focusing on crops.
“The programme is duplicating a lot of things and contracting out on the other hand. “It feels as if the research wasn’t thoroughly done. “If you look at the cluster farming, have they trained people on this, and is there a market identified for this produce? “Also, what will happen to other government programmes like LIMID and NAMPAAD,” he said.
LIMID is the Livestock Management and Infrastructure Development programme, a government intervention aimed at improving livestock management. NAMPAAD, or the National Master Plan for the Arable Agriculture and Dairy Development, was designed to make arable and dairy farming more attractive and profitable to farmers.