By NATION REPORTER
GREEN Party President Peter Sinkamba says Government must allow small-scale farmers to grow maize side by side with a high value crop like medicinal industrial hemp to give them revenue and sustain themselves.
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Mr. Sinkamba said it was unfortunate that Government in the 2024 budget did not speak to the implementation of the Cannabis Act no 33 of 2021 and the Industrial Hemp Act no 34 which was likely to trigger the evolvement of agriculture in Zambia.
He said for a long-time farmers in Zambia have been supported systems that would only support them in a subsistent manner. He said the prices of maize, which the majority of small-scale farmers cultivate, are not favourable for one to grow.
Mr. Sinkamba said the biggest problem that Zambia has had in the agriculture sector was having a mono crop system, and if maize failed due to low pricing, people abandon farming for other things.
He said the support that the farmers have been receiving has always been about food security which does not provide extra income for them.
Mr. Sinkamba said farmer’s need something that would give them sufficient income to enable them grow because maize has for a long time been grown for consumption.
He said the agriculture sector should be the main driver in poverty reduction because it is the major economic activity that would bail a lot of people out of poverty but the kind of support farmer have where people are getting cannot achieve that.
Mr. Sinkamba said high value crops such as industrial hemp would contribute 80 percent to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) because they bring in huge amounts of revenue.
He also said tomato is also a high value crop with high demand around the world but the challenge that Zambia has had is failure to handle the post-harvest of tomatoes.
“We need processing plants that we can use to process the tomatoes and export them to the United States of America,” he said.
Mr. Sinkamba said Zambia has failed utilise the export window to the United States under the African Growth and Opportunity Act because the country had not exported anything.
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