TRYNESS TEMBO, Lusaka
A LOCAL agricultural firm says it will train over 1,000 small-scale farmers in various technologies during the 2016/17 farming season to boost their productivity.
Agrivision Africa corporate affairs manager Andrew Chintala said currently the major challenge faced by smallholder farmers is lack of skill to help increase their yields.
Mr Chintala said in an interview recently that the company has already carried out a survey among farmers in Mpongwe and Lufwanyama to look at how the firm can help boost their harvest.
“We are in the process of forming a foundation where we will distribute inputs and product skills training to small-scale farmers on how to improve their productivity.
“What we have identified is that farming among smallholder farmers has been negatively affected by lack of access to quality seed and adaptation to new technologies, which has prompted us to form the foundation. We are initially targeting over a 1,000 farmers in the next farming season,” he said.
He said the programme will enable participants to learn new farming techniques to improve their yields. Agrivision will also provide market for the produce.
Mr Chintala said this will ultimately increase productivity, reduce poverty and hunger in the area, as well as income at household level.
He said the programme will also assist farmers mitigate the effects of climate change.