AGRICULTURE UNDER THE SOCIALIST PARTY GOVERNMENT
Without decisive action to remove obstacles to the collection of fair taxes from the mines and reduce the government’s need to borrow; Without decisive action to explore Zambia’s great potential in the agricultural sector by paying particular attention to peasant agriculture and agro processing and linking it to the health and education sector; the UPND government will be unable to create lasting, tangible economic growth or employment.
As we have repeatedly said, the IMF deal that this government has pressed its entire hope on will not help us much to address the country’s rocketing prices, growing poverty, desperation and joblessness.
Peasant agriculture is one sector that we will prioritise as Socialist Party in government to create employment. And when we say peasant agriculture, we don’t mean that everyone will be carrying a kambwili, hoe and be tillers of land. There’s an urgent need to transform the way peasant agriculture is carried out.
We cannot increase agricultural production with a hoe, that’s for planting flowers around your house and a few beds of vegetables to feed a small family. Our plans are much bigger than that and will involve many jobs being created in the agricultural sector because of the transformations we will make
Transformative peasant agriculture under this government will need new equipment, that is, appropriate ploughs, planters, harvesters and other necessities. To produce these, we will need to set up factories all over the country employing engineers and their technicians, human resources experts, accountants, IT experts, marketing and sales staff, drivers, mechanics, nurses and clinical officers to ran staff clinics, catering people to manage the staff cafeterias, and so on.
Of course, our reality, as it stands today, is that we may not have all the engineering expertise required to set up and run these factories. We may have to rely on expatriate skills while we train our people in our schools, colleges and universities.
Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party