Farmers urged to add value to produce

Minister of Trade and Industry, Mark Katsonga Phiri has urged farmers in the country to add value to their produce to realise more profits.

He was speaking on Thursday when he presided over the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi’s (Nasfam) annual general meeting held under the theme ‘Market Led Production: A Foundation for Agriculture Commercialisation’.

Said Katsonga Phiri “Malawian farmers have been losing out for so many years because we export raw agricultural products. We will continue to be poor if this trend continues, and that is not in the interest of this government.

“Instead of exporting our products raw, we must add value. That automatically doubles the price and that benefits the farmer and the processor and that is what the government wants.”

One of the farmers, Howard Msukwa cited lack of better marketing arrangements, marketing infrastructure and limited value-addition as key impediments to smallholder farmers’ commercialisation efforts.

“With commercialisation, there is an expectation that there will be increased value-addition initiatives; unfortunately, the infrastructure in the rural areas is largely non-existent and where it exists it is very poor and these include water, electricity, roads infrastructure, and energy.

“Mostly, electricity connectivity is very challenging for new businesses that need to be connected to facilitate agro-processing,” he said.

Msukwa recommended the need to engage the Ministry of Energy to provide easier and cheaper electricity connections and that tariffs and connectivity charges should be structured to provide a conducive environment for increased agro-processing.

On her part, Nasfam chief executive officer Betty Chinyamunyamu noted that there are disparities between the quantity and the quality that the market needs and what the country is producing.

She said: “At the moment, we are providing the right input. For some of the commodities, it means we have to provide the right seed because the varieties that we are currently growing are not demanded on the market.

“So, we need to ensure that we provide the right inputs so that farmers can produce for the right markets.”

Chinyamunyamu said there is need to facilitate markets for the smallholder farmers and bring structure in the markets, observing that most of the times, vendors go into the areas and disrupt markets.