OUR FOOD SECURITY IS THREATENED UNLESS WE START HAVING AN HONEST CONVERSATION OVER FERTILIZER DISTRIBUTION.
On friday the leader of government businesses in parliament (The Vice President)during the questions and answers session informed the nation that the government was still continuing with the FISP program which is a program where govt gives subsidised fertilizers to about 1million farmers accross the country.
The key to ensuring the success of this program however is proper planning esp early distribution of the fertilizers to the farmers .
We all know that southern province and eastern are the biggest contributors to the national grain basket.
Eastern province as an example gets about 610,000 metric tones of fertilizers which is ferried using trucks to the various districts of eastern province which fertilizers come through the Mozambique port of beira.Now to manage the distribution in time, the exercise has to commence in April because there is no rail line for faster and bulky (one- time) distribution .Today is June and theres no sign of the distribution exercise commencing for the eastern province can you imagine how worried the farmers are getting and how the field preperations will be affected and eventually how production will be affected and the subsequent threat to our national food security.Last year am told most farmers did not even receive these fertilizers despite assurance that trucks had started moving.
Dont forget that we dropped by 25% on production from the last farming season and now we are looking at to much more groomy picture coupled with the anticipated high prices of fertilizers for this coming farming season which may go beyond K1000 per 50kg.
Can you imagine what will happen to the cost of our stapple food ,mealie meal next, if we mess up at this stage.
Meanwhile in parliament we are busy politicking and doing cho chise yet the reality on the ground says a different story.
We need for once to stop politicking and start having mature ,decent and honest conversations over issues affecting this country ladies and gentlemen. The sad part is that even the very best brains we have have gotten so politically indoctrinated that they now look at every issue with political lenses.
I repeat “OUR FOOD SECURITY IS AT THREAT UNLESS WE STOP POLITICKING AND START LOOKING AT THE SOLUTIONS AND WE START MOVING TO ADDRESS THESE FEARS.
BINWELL MPUNDU
NKANA MP
UMWINA NKANA