DROUGHT CALLS FOR HARD WORK

THAT President Hakainde Hichilema has declared a national disaster in view of the continued dry spell, condemning the country to food insecurity is not strange.

The signs have been there that the country was at risk of not having enough to feed the hungry population.

There have been calls already for the Ministry of Agriculture to convene an agricultural “indaba” with stakeholders to discuss how the country could mitigate the effects of drought and looming hunger situation.

Key stakeholders in the agriculture sector, particularly those representing farmers have warned about the impending disaster and the need for the country to see how farmers could be helped.

Just this week, the Small-Scale Farmers Development Agency (SAFADA) gave Minister of Agriculture Mtolo Phiri a 14-day ultimatum to convene an “indaba” to find solutions for the agriculture disaster, failure to which farmers will stop engaging the government.

SAFADA executive director Boyd Moobwe said the farmers would resort to engaging the private sector instead of wasting time to engage the government that had no direction for the agriculture sector.

It is common knowledge that the mess in the agriculture sector has not only been dictated by natural factors which cannot be blamed on anyone, but was also man-made due to dysfunctional policies from the Ministry of Agriculture.

The distribution of fertiliser for example, has been an unmitigated disaster as the government opted to play politics in the procurement and distribution of the commodity and other farming inputs.

In declaring a national disaster in Lusaka yesterday, President Hakainde Hichilema said this was arrived at after carrying out a scientific survey to ascertain the level of affected areas across the country.

He said about 84 districts out of 116 districts had been severely affected by the prolonged drought.

The President said the affected districts were from Lusaka, Central, North-Western, Southern, Western and Copperbelt provinces.

Mr Hichilema said that 2.2 million hectares were cultivated during the 2023/2024 farming season and one million hectares had been damaged.

This clearly means that the anticipated bumper harvest has been lost and the nation would not produce enough maize to meet its needs.

President Hichilema said resources would be mobilised to provide assistance to the affected farmers who had heavily invested in farming but have lost their crop due to the drought.

He also appealed to small-scale farmers to come on board to ensure that more maize was grown by utilising available water bodies across the country.

But above all, we hope the government will adopt pragmatic policies that will ensure that even in the midst of the drought, the country should be able to produce other food crops to stem hunger.

As Mr Moobwe said, providing a debt relief package would enable farmers to venture into off season crop production and appealed to the government to introduce a drought-oriented agricultural grants for small-scale farmers in affected areas.

Now is the time for the nation to pool all its resources together even as it seeks help from cooperating partners.

Zambians have faced drought before and they should not fail to come out of this unscathed.