Flood victims told to go for winter cropping

People who were affected with floods in the Lower Shire have been told to start winter cropping in restoring assets and for agriculture recovery.

This was said last week when Circle for Integrated Community Development (Cicod) in partnership with Trocaire made a donation amounting to K54 million to farming communities affected by recent floods.

The floods killed 56 and displaced over 870 000 households in the country.

Cicod and Trocaire presented maize seed, sweet potato vines, vegetable seeds, panga knives and hoes to help affected families to enable them venture into winter cropping in moist areas.Trocaire technical adviser Stanislaus Banda said they have decided to respond with planting materials as a medium-term recovery measure.

“All the 2 000 households will be able to cultivate half an acre of maize and a quarter of an acre of orange sweet potato. Among the 2 000, some 516 households will also grow vegetables for food and income,” said Banda.

Cicod executive director Amos Tizora said the initiative is to encourage the affected families to go back to their bases to do farming so that they should be able to repair their houses.