IT'S within our grasp to change our circumstances from poverty to development, agriculture minister Mundia Sikatana has said.

Launching and waving off the African small scale farmers' Caravan to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg yesterday, Sikatana said the poor were now asking for a hand-up and not handouts.

"We no longer need handouts because it's within our grasp to change our circumstances," Sikatana said. "Poverty is like dirt, if you are dirty there is only you to clean yourself."

Sikatana said African governments must stop viewing the poor and small scale farmers as a problem but main actors in development. He also urged African governments to learn to listen to concerns of their people.

"I am a good listener myself, maybe its because I have not tasted power yet," he said. Sikatana said Africa could only manage economic and human resource development if its people, especially farmers had a greater degree of participation and control over resources on which they relied. He said Zambia was saying no to begging because in the process of begging the nation loses dignity.

Sikatana said the same energy used in crawling on bellies to beg was sufficient to produce the food, half of which was received from begging. "Nobody, not even my bones when I die, will allow you to turn this continent into slave merchants, particularly when this enslavement is tied to food," he said.

Sitakana said as the world was converging for another summit, it was painful to see that the gap between the rich and the poor nations continued to widen. He said while a small portion of mankind enjoyed prosperity, the majority families and people who lived as farmers and producers of food suffered unprecedented poverty and misery.

"Indeed the poor are enormous, untapped reservoirs of initiative and entrepreneurship but their energies are often held in check by poverty, misrule or conflict. They would be the first to say - trade and not aid is the path out of poverty," Sikatana said.

"But our leaders who for most time have not involved the farmers in policies continue sleeping in hotels costing more than the summit they are attending.

They eat on behalf of the poor and hope poverty can be fought that way, but I say we must stop eating on their behalf." Sikatana said only a farmer-centred approach was key to the attainment of sustainability in developing countries. He said the rich few must bail out the poor to enable them become their equals as opposed to continued perpetual handouts. Sikatana said it would not work to think the rich can live beside poor countries.

He said African farmers must not develop resolutions but needed to be resolute and make their agenda visible to the world.

Sikatana noted that also critical to the agricultural agenda was making the sector both a viable enterprise that was competitive in the world markets and a sustainable activity balancing increased production and sustainability of fragile ecosystems for future generations.

He said the problem with Africa was that it rushed to adopting technology when it had no corresponding money and human resource to manage it. Sikatana warned of environmental degradation if Africa adopted genetic technology. "Today we are being forced to grow strange and foreign crops that find our soils strange and foreign.

But I say Africa better be warned today that there is genetic erosion," he said. Sikatana expressed worry at land degradation in the region. He called on farmers to ensure they sustained local animal breeds because exotic breeds did not have the immunity to fight local diseases.

"It's a pity, we rush into technology when we do not have capacities to monitor, assess and survey. Little wonder we continue exporting our produce in raw form and Zambia has never produced even a tea-spoon of powdered milk," said Sikatana.

And Kenyan farmer Moses Shaha said farmers have for a long time been left out of national and international decision making and processes that affect their lives.

He said small scale farmer work very hard to feed the world and yet they were amongst the poorest in the same world. "Liberalisation, which has led to cut-throat competition in agriculture, has placed smallholder farmers in a disadvantaged position," he said.

Shaha said farmers in developing countries like Kenya have not been prepared in terms of capacity and infrastructure to enable them compete effectively in the global market. "As such, they are even disadvantaged in accessing markets, which contributes to their never ending poverty," he said.

Shaha said the collapse of farmers' institutions, including co-operatives and market channels, credit facilities, diminishing extension services, among others, have affected the small holder farmers' ability to improve their economic status.