Farmers get tips on
solar milling ops
By KETRA KALUNGA
ZAMBIA Cooperative Federation (ZCF) has embarked on a sensitisation of farmer cooperatives aimed at creating awareness and capacity on the use of solar milling plants.
ZCF director general James Chirwa said the continuous sensitisation programme was to get all farmers involved in ensuring that the objectives of solar milling plants project were met.
Mr Chirwa said in an interview that the farmers had failed to utilise the project fully due to a number challenges among them lack of technical knowhow.
He the process of having to wait for the payment to be made after supplying mealie was another challenge faced by the farmer cooperatives.
“The challenge is that farmers want to get quick money so they chose to sell the maize instead of producing mealie meal from the solar milling plants because they think the process takes long before they are paid after supplying mealie meal,” he said.
Mr Chirwa said ZCF had been engaging the farmers and explaining that the benefits of producing mealie meal for sale outweighed those of selling maize because the former enables them to maximise their income. He said the ZCF had continued to re-orient farmers on how to operate the solar milling plants through offering skills so that they were able to operate the machines efficiently.
“We are doing our utmost best to try and get things right and ensure that farmers begin to use the solar milling plants to their benefit,” Mr Chirwa said.
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