Continued assistance to small-scale farmers after bumper harvest

Following the success of this year's maize harvest, Zambia has announced that it will continue its assistance programme in the 2003/04 farming season by supplying 60,000 mt of subsidised fertiliser and 3,000 mt of subsidised maize seeds to 150,000 small-scale farmers. "The good harvest [of 2002/03] showed that the programme initiated by government to help farmers has worked very well, and for the first time we are actually exporting maize seeds," said Elizabeth Phiri, permanent secretary in charge of cooperatives and marketing in the ministry of agriculture and cooperatives. Zambia recorded a maize harvest of 1.2 million mt, double that of the previous season when the country suffered a serious drought. Authorities attributed the 2002/03 bumper crop to the government-sponsored assistance programme, which saw 120,000 small farmers receive 48,000 mt of subsidised fertiliser and 2,400 tons of maize seeds. Phiri said the assistance programme was designed to encourage small-scale farmers to "work hard, so that they can enter the commercial farming sector". "Under the programme, small-scale farmers are expected to contribute 50 percent towards the fertiliser and the seeds. Next year this amount will increase to 75 percent, until we get to a stage when most farmers are self-reliant," Phiri said. Following successive droughts in recent years, close to 3 million Zambians faced serious food shortages in 2002.