FISP DELAYS WORRY FARMERS
By BENNIE MUNDANDO WE have been vindicated over our warning to the Ministry of Agriculture that the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) distribution exercise would be a sham because it is now clear that chaos is on the horizon, the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) has charged.
ZNFU president Jervis Zimba told the Daily Nation yesterday that they were failing to understand why there were people in the ministry whose attitude towards ZNFU was that of resentment even when the two entities existed for the good of a poor farmer.
Mr. Zimba said if the ministry had listened their initial suggestion that preparation for the FISP exercise should have started in August, all the current hurdles would have been tackled a long time ago and farmers would have received their inputs in time unlike the current situation where the whole process was still in limbo.
He said as long as there was no synchronisation of operations between the ministry and the ZNFU as the two institutions continued working parallel to each other and in isolation, the challenges facing the agriculture sector will never be addressed.
Mr Zimba asked officials from the two institutions to bury their egos and work towards achieving the ultimate goal of improving agriculture in the country.
He said the decision by the ministry to get the database from the ZNFU which had well-documented information on which farmers were benefiting from the FISP project in each district was the first step towards failure.
“Up to now, we do not understand the reason why the ministry decided to take away the database from us and takeover the responsibility. We are not against the fact that such responsibility was taken away from us but we are against its failure to act decisively even after being warned long before this exercise was to start.
“I do not understand this suspicion between us and the ministry because this has a spill-over effect on the poor farmers. The planting season is almost over yet farmers are still in the dark as to whether they will receive their packages or not and the ministry is to blame for this mess because we warned them in August over the impending disaster but they did not listen because they wanted things done their own way,” Mr. Zimba complained.
He said with what he termed as this lacklustre attitude towards the sector from the ministry, food security was at stake.
“Preparation for the next farming season begin at the end of another season and when farmers fail to plant on time, then food security is at stake. We cannot afford to have a situation where we are forced to start importing food because of our carelessness when we have the potential to record another bumper harvest,” Mr Zimba said.