7 May 2008
Maputo — Mozambique produces surpluses of maize and cassava, but still imports large, and increasingly expensive, amounts of rice and wheat, Agriculture Minister Soares Nhaca told the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Wednesday.
Replying to questions from deputies about the country's food deficit, Nhaca said that maize production grew from 1.3 million tonnes in 2005 to 1.6 million tonnes in 2007, and is expected to reach 1.7 million tonnes this year.
There has also been a steep rise in cassava production, from 6.6 million tonnes in 2005 to 8.2 million tonnes in 2007. The forecast for this year's cassava harvest is 8.8 million tonnes.
But urban tastes demand bread and very little wheat is currently produced in Mozambique. So Mozambique needs to import 460,500 tonnes of wheat a year, said Nhaca. The rice deficit is not so large - even so, Mozambique needs to import 316,000 tonnes of rice a year.
These two grains have seen enormous price rises in recent months. Nhaca told the deputies that the price of a tonne of rice on the world market has shot up from 628 to over 1,000 US dollars just in the past five weeks.
He blamed these price rises on the combination of climate change, soaring rises in the price of fuel and other agricultural inputs, and the use of grains for bio-fuel rather than for food.
Nhaca said that the government was banking on a "green revolution" to raise agricultural production and eliminate the food deficit. The first steps had been taken including the distribution of the modest amount of 150 tonnes of wheat seed, mostly to farmers in Tete and Manica provinces, to expand the country's meagre wheat production.
The government had also distributed 246 tonnes of various seeds to households affected by the January-February floods in the central provinces, and had organised fairs to provide inputs to some 60,000 households recovering from this year's disasters.
Research is key to any Green Revolution, and Nhaca said nine different varieties of wheat are being tested in various parts of the country. Clones of cassava varieties resistant to brown streak disease are being multiplied and distributed in Nampula province.
The government is also boosting the availability of fertilizer. Nhaca said the government was promoting large scale imports of fertilizer which should reduce the price paid by farmers. The longer term solution, however, is to attract private investors willing to set up fertilizer factories in Mozambique.
Nhaca also stressed the importance of increasing the area under irrigation. He said that between 2005 and 2007 the government rehabilitated and made available to producers 8,513 hectares of small scale irrigation systems, thus bringing the total irrigated area in the country to 49,000 hectares.
He stressed that the government wants to restore the 118,000 hectares of irrigated land that the country possessed before the South African apartheid regime launched its war of destabilisation against Mozambique. But Nhaca warned that "making full use of the irrigation systems involves other determinant aspects such as the transfer of technology to the producers, and access to inputs and to markets".
Key to transferring new techniques to peasant farmers are the rural extensionists. Nhaca said that 185 new extensionists are being recruited, which will bring the number up to 762. By the start of the next agricultural campaign, in September, all these extensionists, he promised, "will have been duly trained and equipped".
"We shall improve the quality and coverage of the extensions services to all 128 districts in the country", he pledged.
Other aspects critical to the success of a Green Revolution, he said, included upgrading the roads that lead to key production areas, speeding up rural electrification, and improving river and maritime transport
"An effective response to our country's food problems lies in implementing the Green Revolution strategy", Nhaca declared. "Let's make the Green Revolution an instrument in the struggle against poverty".
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