CASP KEY IN UPLIFTING AGRIC – CHISANGA

By Jessica Mwansa

THE current standing potential that we have in agriculture both locally and regionally is something that needs to be driven with a lot of effort and good policies, economist Kelvin Chisanga has said.

Speaking to The Scoop, Mr. Chisanga said the concept of the Farmer Input Support Program (FISP) which had been improved to the Comprehensive Agriculture Transformation Program (CASP), has been a good lever in uplifting some of the key fundamentals within the sector.

“Agriculture in Zambia has contributed about 19 percent to the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) profile which has employed a number of people across different fields. It comes in as one of the biggest employers despite the challenges of the small wage compared to other sectors. However, the CASP gives a different touch altogether because what we need now is a proper mind set of diversification within the agriculture sector,” Mr. Chisanga said.

He said there was a need for timely delivery of farming inputs so as to help curb the looming hunger due to low productivity that may have been as a result of the climatic conditions adding that the only way to work around agriculture was to put a deadline in terms of distribution.

“By delivering on time, we can prepare on time and have a way of introducing capacity building around farmers that would help. Government needs to employ more extension officers to help in this situation as it calls for us to see how best we can work out the CASP program to ensure that we basically support agriculture productivity scales.

“Overtime, we have seen that because of the issue of not adding stabilized systems around the policy in terms of delivery of farming inputs on time, we are putting ourselves off the balance. If we can look at the best way of delivering inputs on time, that will warrant good substantial productive output as compared to what we have seen or witnessed overtime as such our local production has put us in a very difficult situation,” he said.

Mr. Chisanga said the agriculture sector received enough support though it lagged behind in some areas and needed to venture more in other crops.

“The bureaucratic system in the agriculture sector and even the way in which we embrace implementation is what is lacking. There is a need for us to look for a better way in which we can marshal ideas around monitoring and evaluation to see where we are lagging in terms of the issues surrounding the sector.

Therefore, we need to look at where we are because we can do much with the comprehensive packaging that the Government is looking forward to supporting and we will see that there will be a good uptake in terms of other cash crops,” he said.

He said the Government should not only rely on the traditional export of copper but also engage in the agriculture aspect of traditional export which he said could widen the basket of the economy.

“There are legumes that are now taking shape and that entails that we need to look at diversification on the table because so much of maize is what is causing the situation of mealie meal to become expensive. We cannot run away from what we have been accustomed to but we need to find a way in which we can actually come up with different crop mix such as sorghum, millet, cassava among others and also utilise them to add to the potential skill of getting an export market,” he said.