Nam agri products on par with the best

ELLANIE SMIT

WINDHOEK

Agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein says there is no question that Namibia has the ability to produce quality products that can compete in the best-paying markets.

“We must not sell ourselves short. Namibia produces the best beef. The quality is not questionable we are in the premier league. The same with our grapes, our asparagus, blueberries, dates, lamb and fish.”

He said what the country needs to realise is that the Namibian market is small, as it only needs to feed 2.4 million people.

“If you want to get rich from agriculture, you must export surplus and this must be done at high quality, because this is where you fetch the best price.”

He said beef is a good example, as only 25 to 30% of Namibia’s total beef production is consumed in the country.

“So, we sit on about 75% that must be exported if we want to carry on with beef production.”

Schlettwein was speaking at a panel discussion on the role of women in agriculture and said that Namibia is sitting on an extensive agriculture system that needs to be intensified.

Urban farming

“That brings urban agriculture very much into the focus. We have to produce more on smaller pieces of land. Land is a scarce resource and technology is helping us. We can very meaningfully increase, especially horticulture production, but also poultry and also some of the protein production needed, by intensifying.”

Schlettwein said the country needs to look at the total agricultural value chain, from production to consumption, and all the links in between that has to be considered.

“Agriculture is much larger than farming.”

He said the wealth creation in this this value chain must then be shared equally to create the necessary wealth.

Daisry Mathias, the presidential advisor on youth matters and enterprise development, said the cabinet had resolved that agriculture must become one of the priority sectors.

To that end, the finance ministry made a commitment that all government offices, ministries and agencies must leverage the procurement power of the state.

“I think the challenges are in operationalising these directives. Government ministries, agencies and offices need to make that commitment, that monetary commitment through procuring through Agro-marketing Trade Agency (AMTA), so that it can actually become the stimulus and absorb and off-take the fresh produce from the small-scale farmers,” she said.

Investment

Mathias said it does not stop at market access, but that capacity also needs to be addressed.

“If you look at investment in the agriculture sector over the last 30 years, it is averaging about 6% investment.”

She said that in 2019 alone out of N$30 billion capital flows that came into the country, only N$1.9 billion went into agriculture.

“If you look at the loan book of our commercial and development funding institutions, only N$7.8 billion, which is 7% of the total loans in the country, is going into the sector.

“I think we also need to create stimulus, optimise production before we talk about off-take and market access.

“I think there is a lot of need to leverage technology and to help farmers to become to become more climate resilient, so that they can actually have the yields to [deliver] to the market.”

Resettlement farms

Schlettwein further said that they are in the process of amending the rules for resettlement and for usage of communal land under leasehold, where the standard of having just a certain number of animals on the land is not good enough.

“We are proposing a set of activities, whether it is horticulture, livestock, tourism… any land use that can add value to the livelihood of the person that has land should be taken into consideration when we judge whether a person is fit for resettlement on a piece of land,”

He added that resource constraints like water need to be taken into consideration, but at the moment the rules are too limiting and need to be diversified so that the use of land is optimised.