More farmers upgrade to commercial farming, govt

SEVERAL farmers in 17 regions have been transformed to commercial farmers after intensive awareness creation by the Ministry of Agriculture on commercial farming, Parliament heard Thursday.

Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Mr. Anthony Mavunde, said the success story was a result of the good job done by the ministry in collaboration with stakeholders in educating farmers and finding market for their produce. He mentioned the regions where farmers have been upgraded to commercial farming as Mwanza, Kagera, Geita, Shinyanga, Simiyu, Mara, Tabora, Kilimanjaro, Tanga, Pwani, Mtwara, Lindi, and some part of Arusha, Ruvuma, Mbeya, Songwe, and Iringa.

Mr. Mavunde was speaking in Parliament yesterday when reacting to a question posed by Special-Seat MP Shally Raymond (CCM) who wanted to know regions taking the lead in the campaign in transforming farmers from engaging in small scale farming to commercial farming.

The deputy minister explained that the national campaign for commercial agriculture started by promoting crops with a nature of being cultivated as commercial crops such as cotton, cashew nuts, coffee, tea, tobacco and sisal. The advocacy was carried out by Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies (AMCOSs).

He said the regions which cultivate commercial crops are those which were lagging behind in implementing the concept of commercial farming, which include Rukwa, Katavi, Kigoma, Dodoma, Singida, Morogoro, Manyara and Njombe.

"The major crops grown in these regions are cereals and those for producing edible oil for ensuring food security in the country," he said. "Agricultural officers provided education to farmers in those regions, transforming several small scale farmers to commercial farmers".

The Agricultural Sector Development Strategy, which is an important guiding tool for implementation of the sectoral policies for the next ten years (2015/16 - 2024/25), intends to operationalizing transformation of the agricultural sector into modern, commercial, highly productive, resilient, competitive in the national and international market which leads to achieving food security and poverty reduction, contributing to realization of Tanzania Development Vision 2025 (TDV) that envisages raising the general standard of living of Tanzanians to the level of a typical medium-income developing country by 2025.