‘Smart climate agro machinery way to go’

GOVERNMENT should impose heavy taxes on the importation of agricultural machinery such as ploughs that encourage conventional farming which is currently not suitable for Zambia following the climatic conditions, National Union for Small Scale Farmers Association of Zambia (NUSSFAZ) president, Frank Kayula, has suggested.

Dr Kayula emphasised that conventional farming was not suitable for use under the current climate conditions.

He explained in an interview that farmers needed to practice conservation farming which stored moisture in the soil even after experiencing a drought.

“Our policies should drive us into conservation agriculture as much as possible, reduce the import tax on machines for conservation agriculture, I know that some of these things are zero rated and that is good but put heavy taxes on ploughs.

“Most farmers think when you clean the land then you have done the best, there must be some soil remaining in the field so that it cushion the evaporation of the water and sinking of water in the soil, that way, we preserve some water in the soil even if we have a drought,” Dr Kayula said.

He said Zambia needed agriculture machinery such as reapers to be flooded on the market as they encouraged conservation farming.

Reapers, he said, would enable farmers prepare their land using conservation method which helped the crops not dry up when there was a drought.

“Why farmers are still with convention farming is probably with our own policies. We would like to see a situation where ZRA will heap heavy tax on those importing ploughs because they are not healthy for our soil and land preparation anymore.

“Climate change is here to stay, all we need is to adapt to it by taking up technologies that will take up to harvest crops, conservation agriculture as proved to do that,” he said.