From IRIN, Swazi­land is con­sid­er­ing a new pro­posal to sub­si­dize farm­ing inputs such as seeds and fer­til­izer. The Swazi­land gov­ern­ment hopes the sub­si­dies will improve food pro­duc­tion in the coun­try and will take away the reliance on food assis­tance from the inter­na­tional community.

Swaziland’s gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to sub­si­dize agri­cul­tural inputs to boost food pro­duc­tion in the con­sis­tently food inse­cure country.

The pro­posal, how­ever, has yet to be passed by Cab­i­net and would then require the estab­lish­ment of a financ­ing scheme for the agri­cul­tural inputs ahead of the main plant­ing period that begins in October.

In the past decade, up to two thirds of the one mil­lion pop­u­la­tion have relied on donor food assis­tance and although the food short­ages were largely blamed on erratic rain­fall, the return of good rains in 2009, did lit­tle to improve the country’s food security.

“The rea­son why more food isn’t pro­duced is poverty. Farm­ers did not have money to buy seeds and fer­til­izer. Those who did not have teams of oxen were hard-pressed to rent gov­ern­ment trac­tors. We had no bud­get to assist them,” Sipho Sime­lane, Senior Agri­cul­ture Offi­cer at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, told IRIN.

The plan to intro­duce sub­si­dies comes on the back of Malawi’s bumper 2009 maize har­vest of 3.66 mil­lion tons that was attrib­uted to good rains and the suc­cess of an agri­cul­tural sub­sidy pro­gramme tar­get­ing poor small­holder farmers.

Sime­lane said the inputs ini­tia­tive could add 42,000 met­ric tons to the national food sup­ply and also serve as a vehi­cle to alle­vi­ate poverty.

Wil­son Sikhondze, of the agri­cul­tural min­istry, told IRIN the most recent har­vest (2008–2009) pro­duced about 71,000 tons of maize. How­ever, dur­ing the 2007–2008 drought year, 83,000 tons of maize was har­vested and is seen as an indi­ca­tion that avail­abil­ity of agri­cul­tural inputs, rather than erratic rain­fall impacted more severely on production.

Swaziland’s annual national maize require­ment is about 140,000 tons.

Tar­get­ting farmers

“This would go a long way to alle­vi­ate the short­ages. Farm­ers will be obliged to sell sur­pluses to the National Maize Board. They’ll be paid,” Sime­lane said.

It is expected the sub­sidy pro­gramme would be more dis­cre­tionary to reduce pos­si­bil­i­ties of fraud and increase food pro­duc­tion suc­cesses, as farm­ers would be required to pay for one-third of the cost of the inputs.

“We will be tar­get­ing 21,000 farm­ers in areas where there is the great­est poten­tial for high yields. We are focus­ing on maize pro­duc­tion. Each farmer is required to have at least one hectare of land which cur­rently pro­duces at least two met­ric tons of maize. The goal is to increase yields to at least four met­ric tones of maize per hectare,” Sime­lane said.

“Swazi­land has four agri-climatic zones, and the ini­tia­tive is tar­geted at the north­ern high veld and the high middle-veld where there is ade­quate rain­fall to sus­tain crops if farm­ers get the inputs they need,” he said.

The mid­dleveld and low veld has ade­quate soil, but lacks suf­fi­cient water resources and relies solely on rain fall.

If imple­mented and should it improve food pro­duc­tion there will be other chal­lenges to over­come, includ­ing a revamped agri­cul­tural dis­tri­b­u­tion infra­struc­ture, Sime­lane said.

“We need to look at national stor­age facil­i­ties. They are run by the National Maize Board (NMC, whose main stor­age facil­ity is at the Mat­sapha Indus­trial Estate in the cen­ter of the coun­try), where farm­ers sell their crops. As part of government’s decen­tral­iza­tion pol­icy, we have facil­i­ties built in all four provinces of the coun­try, with more planned,” he said.

The donor depen­dent coun­try that is ruled by sub-Sahara’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III, already has agri­cul­tural input sub­sidy pro­grams and has served to high­light some of the prob­lems the gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive may encounter.

Curb­ing expectations

“We have been pro­vid­ing inputs in years past, but for gov­ern­ment to do this is new,” Khany­isile Mabuza, Assis­tant Coun­try Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Food and Agri­cul­ture Organ­i­sa­tion (FAO), told IRIN.

The Swazi­land offices of the UN’s World Food Pro­gramme (WFP), the FAO and the community-based poverty-eradication non­govern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tion World Vision, which part­ners the UN agen­cies, has been mov­ing away from food dis­tri­b­u­tion toward pro­grammes self-sufficient food pro­duc­tion for a few years.

The major­ity of farm­ers who are recip­i­ents of sub­sidy pro­grammes reside on com­mu­nal Swazi Nation Land, where 80 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion lives under the con­trol of palace appointed chiefs.

“When we sup­plied inputs it was dur­ing emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. We set up trade fairs, and farm­ers came to learn about the dif­fer­ent crops. We then sup­plied seeds for sorghum, beans or maize. But it set up expec­ta­tions,” Mabuza said.

“Farm­ers felt they would always be sup­plied. They receive pack­ages con­tain­ing R600 (US$81) worth of inputs, but they would sell the con­tents for R400 (US$54) and felt it was their right to do so. Then they started mak­ing demands like they wanted trac­tors,” she said.

Mabuza said government’s approach to tar­get farm­ers was a good one. “It is good that gov­ern­ment will man­age its input ini­tia­tive, and that farm­ers will con­tribute and not just receive. To be a suc­cess farm­ers must have a sense of own­er­ship,” she said.

World Vision has under­taken a sur­vey for gov­ern­ment and iden­ti­fied 55,000 small-scale farm­ers as pos­si­ble can­di­dates for sub­si­dies. “We want farm­ers who are pas­sion­ate about food pro­duc­tion, who will work,” Rus­sell Dlamini, Pro­gramme Direc­tor for World Vision, told IRIN.

How­ever, mon­e­tary con­cerns may weigh heav­ily on the abil­ity of the gov­ern­ment to finance the sub­sidy pro­gramme. The renogia­tion of Swaziland’s share of regional cus­tom duties derived from its mem­ber­ship of the South­ern African Cus­toms Union has seen rev­enue cut by R4 bil­lion (US$541 million).

Accord­ing to some esti­mates the custom’s rev­enue pro­vided gov­ern­ment with about 60 per­cent of it budget.

Like

Unlike