Smallholder farmers key to food security – Nkomeshya 

GOVERNMENT says small holder farmers are critical players in enhancing food security and eradicating poverty in the country.

Permanent Secretary for Resettlement Division under the Office of the Vice President, Mavis Nkomeshya, said the Government supported efforts aimed at empowering smallholder farmers to enable them to be productive.  

Ms. Nkomeshya pointed out that small holder farmers were the backbone of the agriculture sector and underscored the need to support approaches that aimed to empower small holder farmers with skills to better their livelihoods.  

“Smallholder farmers are the backbone of our agriculture sector, and their role in ensuring food security, poverty alleviation cannot be over emphasised,” she said.

She implored players in the agriculture sector to support initiatives that aimed to promote small holder farmers to increase their production.

The Permanent Secretary said this when she opened the HOPE-SHEP sector meeting in Lusaka where she noted that the Government strongly believed that small holder farmers, if empowered, could greatly contribute to rural development and poverty mitigation.

She emphasized that the empowering of small holder farmers will result in rural communities being lifted out of poverty.

She said skills training and capacity building for small holder farmers was cardinal if they were to contribute meaningfully to national development.

And Speaking at that same event, a representative from JICA Zambia Office Shinichiro Kato, said the HOPE project was designed to uplift the livelihoods of smallholder farmers by increasing their productivity.

Mr Kato cited Mayukwayukwa and Meheba resettlement as project sites where livelihoods of the beneficiaries had been transformed.

Credit: ZANIS