Dear Editor,
The campaign to grow more food is faced with some difficulties which apparently are not being adequately addressed. These stem from lack of information and consequently support, two essential elements in any strategy to increase the agricultural output of the country. The programme has little centralized knowledge of who is farming, what they are growing, what existing farmers are planning to do, who are the potential farmers and their plans, and what support they need. Without this information, the Ministry of Agriculture is unable to provide meaningful support such as guiding farmers on the types of crops best suited to their soil conditions, including the yield and economic viability of those crops, providing quality seed and/or seedlings, and providing training to meet their needs. In addition, NARI, the technical arm of the ministry, needs to be more active in propagating strains that are resistant to diseases found here, and promoting cultivation methods that improve the economics of farming.
Here’s a couple of practical examples of the results of these difficulties. First, for several months now, NARI had a moratorium on supplying fruit plants to farmers. This was modified to a policy of selling ‘one or two’ to a single farmer. When questioned, an official at NARI said that, as a hypothetical, if the nursery sold all the plants to one farmer, it wouldn’t have any to sell to the next farmer who came along. Asked why the nursery does not increase supply in the face of an apparent shortage, the answer was that past increases in supply resulted in a number of plants being left unsold. Second, short-term training for farm workers in good farm practices (caring for plants, use of chemicals, etc) is non-existent. An official at the School of Agriculture, which conducts a much longer training programme, said that in the past such exercises had not been well attended.
The problem with the first NARI answer is that from a macro standpoint, it doesn’t matter if one farmer planted, say, one hundred trees or one hundred farmers planted one tree.
It may be that economies of scale would favour the former. But it is the latter response which clearly indicates the lack of information available to NARI. If NARI had a database of what farmers were planning, it would gear its operations to meet those needs. In past years, I was able to overcome this impediment through the unaccustomed cooperation of one of the nursery officers, who listened to my plans and incorporated them into his acquisition of seed and growing programme. He was doing on a small scale what NARI should have been doing on a much larger one. Information, or the lack of it, is also the core reason for the training needs of farmers not being met. Poorly attended training programmes are either caused by poor communication or inadequate data.
I am aware that GMC has started the process of developing a database of farmers, which is commendable. I made contact with them to have my name included, but found it very limited. I was never asked what plans I had or what my needs were. It appears to be more a database for their marketing effort. What is needed, however, is a more comprehensive one that departments such as NARI, training and GMC could tap into.
The best people to gather this information are the agricultural officers attached to each region.
The information on a well-developed survey should include acreage and crops under cultivation, additional acreage and crops to be brought under cultivation, time-frame for the expansion, plant pestilence affecting the area, cultivation practices, and the support needs of the farmers (training, drainage and irrigation, quality seeds/seedlings, etc). This would then be merged with known information on local soil conditions.
This database would be dynamic with constant updates to reflect the implementation of plans and new potential. Only when such a database is developed and used by all departments can the ‘Grow More’ campaign overcome some of the shortcomings affecting its viability.
Yours faithfully,
Louis Holder
