EDITORIAL: Stop farming promises and start farming food
President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah laid out big ambitions for agriculture in her State of the Nation Address. She pledged to slash Namibia’s agricultural imports by 80% and earmarked N$561 millionfor agri-infrastructure in the 2025/26 budget.
Her promise: to cut dependence on imports, boost local production and build a farming sector that’s both competitive and climate-resilient.
Namibia has 11 government-backed green schemes. They’re meant to be engines of food security and rural jobs. Yet too many stand idle or limp along with pitiful yields. Uvhungu-Vhungu is the worst-kept secret: a project supposedly managed from Windhoek over WhatsApp. Farming decisions made from offices hundreds of kilometres away. Field problems 'solved' with messages and emojis.
That’s not management. It’s a mockery.
Meanwhile, fertile land goes unplanted. Promised harvests never materialise. Local farmers are shut out while public money funds salaries, travel and reports instead of irrigation and seed. Even when water flows and equipment works, bureaucratic bottlenecks ensure fields sit bare.
How can we talk about hitting 10% GDP when government-run schemes can’t even feed nearby villages?
It’s time to be honest. The state has shown it can’t farm efficiently. Privatise or lease failing schemes. Open them up to serious farmers who’ll work the land daily, not phone it in. Set performance contracts that tie funding to real harvests, not glossy reports. Make local expertise the backbone of operations.
President Nandi-Ndaitwah’s vision is right. Agriculture must grow. But it won’t happen through slogans or distant control. It will happen when we treat farming like the essential business it is – demanding discipline, sweat and local knowledge.
We don’t need WhatsApp farmers. We need real ones. And we need them now.
Her promise: to cut dependence on imports, boost local production and build a farming sector that’s both competitive and climate-resilient.
Namibia has 11 government-backed green schemes. They’re meant to be engines of food security and rural jobs. Yet too many stand idle or limp along with pitiful yields. Uvhungu-Vhungu is the worst-kept secret: a project supposedly managed from Windhoek over WhatsApp. Farming decisions made from offices hundreds of kilometres away. Field problems 'solved' with messages and emojis.
That’s not management. It’s a mockery.
Meanwhile, fertile land goes unplanted. Promised harvests never materialise. Local farmers are shut out while public money funds salaries, travel and reports instead of irrigation and seed. Even when water flows and equipment works, bureaucratic bottlenecks ensure fields sit bare.
How can we talk about hitting 10% GDP when government-run schemes can’t even feed nearby villages?
It’s time to be honest. The state has shown it can’t farm efficiently. Privatise or lease failing schemes. Open them up to serious farmers who’ll work the land daily, not phone it in. Set performance contracts that tie funding to real harvests, not glossy reports. Make local expertise the backbone of operations.
President Nandi-Ndaitwah’s vision is right. Agriculture must grow. But it won’t happen through slogans or distant control. It will happen when we treat farming like the essential business it is – demanding discipline, sweat and local knowledge.
We don’t need WhatsApp farmers. We need real ones. And we need them now.
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