Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale on Tuesday oozed confidence that he will meet the 40- day ultimatum which President Lazarus Chakwera gave him to deliver this year’s Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP).
The President issued the ultimatum when he launched this year’s AIP in Kasungu on October 20.
Speaking after witnessing the commencement of the programme’s implementation in Neno on Tuesday, Kawale said, unlike in previous years, the major problem encountered so far with the programme this year is irregularities in names of beneficiaries in some districts.
“The biggest problem we have faced is misspelling of beneficiaries’ names. This has caused delays in about four districts. However, we are working towards completely dealing with this issue,” he said.
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Kawale added that 19,728 beneficiaries have already been served to date and that the fertiliser is, in the meantime, being redeemed from districts such as Zomba, Balaka, Chiradzulu, Chitipa and Karonga.
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“More agriculture districts are expected to start tomorrow [Wednesday] after sensitisation meetings with councils, area stakeholder panels and village stakeholder panels on selection criteria and the number of beneficiaries in their areas.
“As of October 28, we had 108,035 metric tonnes [mt] of AIP fertiliser in the country and more of the commodity is coming. A total of 140,796mt is available in total—AIP and commercial—with more coming into the country,” the minister said.
A beneficiary in Neno, Andrew Chatata, hoped the arrival of fertiliser in the area was not for show, saying people in the border district “always struggle to access the inputs”.
“I am happy because the onset of rains happens quickly here; so, I hope every eligible farmer will be able to redeem their inputs.
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“In the past, we used to struggle because the process was delayed and once rains started coming, travelling to selling points was problematic and some people ended up not redeeming their inputs,” Chatata said.
Government has trimmed the number of farmers to benefit from this year’s AIP from last year’s 2.5 million to 1.5 million.
Out of the 1.5 million farming households, 1.49 million are expected to access two 50 kilogramme bags of NPK and Urea and a pack of seed each while 9,750 households will access two female goats each.
The farmers are supposed to contribute K15,000 for a bag and K3,500 per pack of seed. Those accessing the goats will pay K15,000 for each of them.
This year, government is targeting “productive farmers”, moving away from vulnerable households that will be “taken care of in social cash transfer programmes and others”.
