`FISP PERIOD SHORT FOR FARMERS’

By CHITE MTONGA

WE will continue lobbying for financial support for smallscale farmers as it is unreasonable to assume that three years of FISP will help most farmers to graduate into commercial farmers, Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) has said.

ZNFU media and public relations Manager Kelvin Kaleyi told the Daily Nation that replicating Western countries in financing the farming community was not realistic.

“The recommendations by World Bank which we have now embraced are good but are they workable in Zambia? What we must understand is that unlike our colleagues in developed countries, our small-scale farmers do not even have titled land to use as collateral to get any financial assistance.

“These are farmers who make K6, 000 a year and that is when they sell their produce, so how do we expect them to graduate to commercial farmers, what kind of machinery you can buy with K6, 000, so as a union we will continue to advocate for incentives for small-scale farmers,” he said.

Mr Kaleyi said that the union would continue lobbying government to challenge the decision by the Ministry of Agriculture to restrict FISP to three years.

He however congratulated government on the effectiveness of the e-voucher system.

“Government should be congratulated for introducing the e- voucher system because, we now we do not expect any misappropriation of money meant for FISP unlike in the recent past were money was misused by people just within the Ministry of Agriculture,” Mr Kaleyi said.