Dikoloti Vows To Cut Food Import Bill
Pini Bothoko | Monday March 2, 2020 16:05
Presenting to Parliament his Ministry’s committee supply for 2020-2021 financial year, Dikoloti said the country continues to experience increase in the cost of importing food.
He said the total domestic production of cereals, which are a key staple food, stood at 45,000 tonnes during the 2018-2019 season, equivalent to 14.8% of the national demand.
The Minister said for this financial year the ministry will focus on attainment of food security and self-sufficiency for Botswana, commercialisation of agriculture and creation of a conducive and vibrant environment to grow agriculture across all its sub-sectors.
He added that both the output and productivity in the crop sub-sector continues to be a challenge, a situation exacerbated by climate change and underutilisation of ploughing fields.
Dikoloti further said in an effort to promote productivity and increase output of the sector the Ministry is scaling up the process of clustering arable fields.
The up-scaled cluster initiative is being piloted in five clusters of Kgoro, Masunga, Leshibitse, Malwelwe and Mookane with the view to replicate it in other areas according to the minister.
He said the programme is expected to result in increased title land, increased productivity, improved locally produced grain at strategic reserves leading to reduction in grain import bill and improved livelihoods.
Dikoloti revealed that the Ministry is also embarking on the review of ISPAAD to make it appropriately focused and targeted to farmers at the respective levels based on output and not input as is the case at the moment.
“This will be applied recognising the graduation of farmers from different levels. We will digitise farming and progress into active fourth industrial revolution status to improve data collection and management in the coming financial year,” he said.
A deliberate focus will be made in ensuring sustainability of programmes targeting communities and those that are earmarked for privatisation to attain increased production, improved livelihoods, employment and job creation.
Focusing on horticulture, Dikoloti said the Ministry aims to foster collaboration with Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to develop a strategy for an effective subsidy programme as well as to develop food safety standards.
He added that the collaboration will develop an agro invest model to enable private investment in Agriculture, food systems and specific value chains as well as to develop horticulture strategy and horticulture value chains.
“Horticulture has been growing steadily due to uptake of improved technologies. The Ministry provides horticultural production through capacitating farmers, implementing ISPAAD horticulture support programme and development of the irrigation scheme,” he said.
He said the Ministry continues to promote foreign direct investment through investors who could transfer expertise and skills to locals in horticulture. In addition, Dikoloti said almost 1,000 hectares has been identified for irrigation.
More land would be availed to the initiative following completion of agriculture land inventory at the end of March 2020, he said.
Dikoloti added that another concern is the cattle sub-sector, which is under imminent threat. It used to be amongst the top contributors to gross domestic product and a source of livelihood for many Batswana.
He said the cattle numbers have continued to decline and performance indicators are unsatisfactory. For this reason the Ministry is implementing a number of initiatives to reverse the trends in the beef industry in general.
Members of Parliament are yet to comment on the Ministry’s committee of supply presentation.