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Mozambique: Biofuels Must Not Rob Farmers of Their Land - Guebuza
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
28 January 2008
Posted to the web 28 January 2008
Maputo
Biofuel projects will not be allowed to dislodge Mozambican farmers from their land, President Armando Guebuza has pledged.
In an interview given to Mozambican Television (TVM) and the daily paper "Noticias", Guebuza declared "we do not want the production of biofuel to disinherit Mozambicans from their land or to have a negative impact on food production".
The government's perspective, he stressed, was that biofuels should be grown "in areas where they can help increase the income of Mozambicans, and that can industrialise our country".
He added that it would make no sense to produce the raw materials for biofuels in Mozambique (such as the jatropha shrub) and then have them refined abroad. "They must be refined in the country to bring added value", insisted Guebuza.
As for the current oil exploration activities, notably in the Rovuma Basin, in the far north of the country, Guebuza said that, while it would certainly be good for the country to strike oil, nobody should expect oil "to solve all the problems of Mozambicans".
Those problems, he stressed, would be solved "by the culture of hard work, training and, above all, by employment in small and medium companies".
Mega-projects, such as the MOZAL aluminium smelter, certainly had a beneficial impact, boosted the balance of payments, and gave the country a positive image. But they could not provide the scale of employment that Mozambique needed. "To solve the problems of poverty and hunger, we must have small and medium companies throughout the country", said Guebuza.
As for his repeated calls for a "green revolution", Guebuza said "we want to increase production and productivity, and hence the income of peasant farmers". This would solve problems, not only in the countryside, but also in the towns, by increasing the supply of cheap, locally produced agricultural goods.
To achieve such a revolution required the availability of improved seeds, better management of water resources, and improving rural roads, telecommunications and electricity supplies. Also key was the training of agricultural extensionists.
Guebuza did not believe that simply importing tractors would increase agricultural production. Since Mozambican independence, how many tractors had not been used properly ?, he asked. How many had been transformed into informal buses and taxis, instead of working the fields ?
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"We must take tractors to those who can use them effectively", he said. "But in general we must prioritise animal traction. For our peasants the transition from a hoe to an ox-drawn plough is an important and necessary step".
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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