Crop production down by 40% in CZ— Dado

District agriculture development officer (Dado) for Chiradzulu, Sheila Kang’ombe,says food production in the district has dropped by around 40 percent.

She said this been caused by prolonged dry spells that hit the district in March as people were recovering from floods.

Kang’ombe was speaking in an interview on Friday during a media tour of various flood recovery activities being implemented by her office with support from Agriculture Sector Wide Approach (Aswap) Programme.

She said the floods affected 2 202 farm families in Chiradzulu and most of their crops such as maize, sweet potatoes, tobacco and cotton coupled with livestock were affected.

“As a district, we had put in some drought response and flood response programmes. Ministry of Agriculture Irrigation and Water Development procured about 8 000 cassava cuttings and sweet potato vines which were distributed to the affected farming households.

“With assistance from Mosanto Malawi, we have provided about six metric tonnes of seed to people who had been affected.” said Kang’ombe.

She said the ministry also provided 15 metric tonnes of base dressing fertiliser and 42 metric tons of top dressing fertiliser, which was distributed to the affected farmers.

One million people from 15 of the country’s 28 districts were affected by the floods.

The floods also damaged houses and household property, crops and infrastructure such as roads, bridges and irrigation facilities and nearly 64 000 hectares of land and crops were also destroyed.