Date Of Article: 24/04/2002
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Agro-processing key to poverty reduction—MIRTDC
By: Patrick Zgambo
Only if Malawi empowers local farmers to process products will the country’s poverty reduction programme take a major stride, says the Malawi Industrial Research and Technology Development Centre (MIRTDC) commercial services director Sandy Kachale. Kachale made the observation yesterday in Mzimba when he opened an agro-processing course to enable farmers produce vegetable oil from groundnuts for commercial purposes. Kachale said that it is only through processing agricultural produce that farmers can realise better profits. “At present our farmers are in the field specifically for subsistence reasons. The few that are in commercial farming are often discouraged by the poor gains they get because of the low prices offered at the produce market,” he said. Kachale said selling produce only enriches those that are already rich and tramples on the poor farmer as he is usually exploited with unfair prices by the buyers. He, however, said that if farmers are empowered with the agro-processing skills and technology to process produce before selling, they would fetch better bargains in their efforts to end poverty. Kachale said this would create more businesses and jobs in the country’s rural areas. “This process will not only benefit the farmers but the country as a whole. If you look around you will find that we import a lot of agricultural products whose raw materials are from right here. That shouldn’t be the case because in the end the prices are only too high,” he said. Kachale said that the new initiative will also save the country’s farmers from incurring transport costs and paying for damage of perishable stuff when accessing markets. “We would use easier and cheaper technology like solar in some instances. This is a chance for the local farmer to make more to sustain himself,” he said. The agroprocessing project by MIRTDC, according to Kachale, is a new programme that has benefitted from the debt relief the country had through the Highly Indebted Poorest Countries (Hipc) initiative. According to Kachale, other forms of agro processing that are being considered are poultry feed production, fruit juice processing, poultry farming, soya milk processing and baking. Six districts have been earmarked for the project’s first phase. MIRTDC is using already existing structures like non governmental organisations and government departments to identify people to give the skills. The participants are expected to take the skills to farmers. “This is only a starting point for us. We realise they may be people who may want the skills but they do not belong to these groups. All that these people have to do is to get together in groups and confront us and we will help because this training is open to all Malawians,” he said . At the vegetable oil expelling training course in Mzimba, participating groups went away with ‘Spindle press’ machines to start businesses.
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