Online Reporter
Patience Maturure
Agriculture Reporter
The Agricultural Rural Development Authority (ARDA) is poised to increase its production targets to more than 60 000 hectares of winter wheat and over 100 000 ha of summer cereal production driven by a joint venture initiative.
Government has been promoting joint venture initiatives to boost agricultural production and ensure national food security.
More than 3 000 partnerships have already been established.
Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Permanent Secretary Professor Obert Jiri recently said this initiative was aimed at unlocking productivity and boosting agricultural production.
“One of the key strategies for production and for increasing production on our land is to ensure that those with capacity to produce partner with those with land and ensure production on our land.
“This strategy of encouraging joint ventures between the investors and the landholders is key to unlock productivity,” he said.
He said ARDA had been instrumental in facilitating these partnerships, providing necessary investments for farmers to access inputs and working capital.
“We have to date over 3 000 joint ventures across the country that we are witnessing and we have instructed ARDA to also focus on these joint ventures and ensure that they provide the necessary investment for our farmers to produce.
“Because what most of our farmers lack is access to inputs and this is what ARDA ordinarily gets because they have the capital to be able to access inputs and working capital for farmers,” he said.
Prof Jiri said in return landholders provide the land to produce enabling ARDA to meet its target of 60 000 hectares for winter programming.
“What ARDA lacks is the land to produce. So this is why these joint ventures now become very important in the ARDA equation.
“So to date, we have seen ARDA rolling out this model in a very sustainable way for the winter programming. The target for ARDA is 60 000 hectares,” he said.
Prof Jiri said 40 000 hectares of the targeted land was under joint ventures, capacitating farmers to produce and contributing significantly to the country’s agricultural output.
He said agricultural product manufacturers including millers are required to source at least 40 percent of their raw materials requirements.
“This is why ARDA is also now able to attract investments to produce for these entities. So we have seen quite a lot of the large millers coming to ARDA to contract them, to produce for them under the joint venture model,” he said.
Prof Jiri said the Government had instructed ARDA to focus on these partnerships, ensuring they provide the necessary support for farmers to thrive.
“So under the ARDA joint venture model, the farmer must have tittle deeds and ARDA does not just produce or get finance from the Government, ARDA gets finance from other private entities.
“We encourage these farmers under the joint venture model to have land and title deeds because that will give comfort to the financiers of ARDA to know that they can put more resources without the risk of them not being paid back,” he said.
Prof Jiri said joint ventures between large millers and farmers in ARDA were boosting agricultural production and the model provided assurance to millers and financiers increasing confidence and driving up production.
“The reason why we emphasise on the importance of the other joint venture model is that agriculture is a business and so when ARDA comes to invest in a joint venture they are not coming there to just support production they are coming there to sweat their resource.
“All farmers big and small must know that it is important that they treat it as a business arrangement and they need to pay back so ARDA can continue to have a revolving fund to expand that production,” he said.
Online Reporter