Agriculture seeks funds to create water reservoirs

THE Ministry of Agriculture is looking for funds to create water reservoirs for irrigation in view of the inconsistent rainfall pattern.

Minister of Agriculture, Dora Siliya said the ministry will have to solicit for funds to maintain or improve production in the agriculture sector.

Speaking in an interview with the Daily Nation, Ms Siliya said the need to embrace irrigation cannot be over looked.

Ms.Siliya lamented that subsidising maize has continued to be a challenge to the development of irritation programs.

“We cannot continue to subsidise agriculture without a plan, we subsidise the farmer, give them money for FISP, then we subsidise FRA to pay for the farmer and then we subsidise the citizens in the mealie meal prices.

“All these activities are taking up most of the resources allocated to the agricultural sector,” she said.

Ms Siliya described as unfortunate that all the money in agriculture goes to the maize crop.

She explained that due to the over dependency on maize in the crop sector, Government has forgotten to invest in infrastructure to create water reservoirs so that we can have water in good rainfall times. She noted that water reservoirs will be able to capture water for use in bad weather.

“It is unfortunate that the nation has only been concerned about supporting this crop maize which is important but we have forgotten everything else that needs to support the agriculture sector,” said the minister.

She proposed that there is need for Zambians to change their eating habits if the crop diversification agenda is to move forward, adding that the nation should now look at crops like cassava which do not need a lot of water to grow and could replace maize meal.

And commenting on the army worms, Ms Siliya said this year was not a disaster as only about 240 to 250 hectares of land have been affected while last year ,over 50 to 60 thousand hectares was affected.