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Mozambique: Wheat Seed Promised for 2008/09 Campaign
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
2 April 2008
Posted to the web 2 April 2008
Maputo
Mozambican Agriculture Minister Soares Nhaca declared on Wednesday that the 1mport of 100 tonnes of wheat seed is guaranteed for the 2008/09 agricultural season, in order to encourage a growth in Mozambique's own wheat production.
Nhaca was speaking at a meeting with academics from Maputo's Eduardo Mondlane University where results were presented from scientific research to identify cassava and wheat varieties most appropriate for Mozambican conditions.
Mozambique currently consumes about 450,000 tonnes of wheat per year. With the exception of a small amount of wheat grown on the Angonia plateau, in the western province of Tete, this is all imported. To reduce this heavy import bill, researchers are looking into baking bread with a mixture of wheat and cassava flour.
Producing bread out of mixed flour that is 74 per cent wheat and 25 per cent cassava would lead to very significant savings.
The Agriculture Ministry is also convinced that wheat can be grown is several other parts of Mozambique, and hopes that by the 2014/15 agricultural year the country will be producing 50 per cent of the wheat that it consumes.
The cost of wheat on the world market rose dramatically last year, partly because of climatic factors, such as a crippling drought in one of the main wheat producers, Australia, and partly due to farmers switching from food crops to biofuels.
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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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