Making farm blocs basis for agro sector growth
Published On April 8, 2023 » 929 Views» By Times Reporter » Features
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By HAPPY MULOLANI –
THE agriculture sector accounts for over 60 per cent of the population engaged in the production of a vari­ety of crops in Zambia.
To further catalyse agricultural development in the country, Government has come up with a programme to realise the development of farm blocs countrywide.
The farm bloc approach means Government needs to match up with adequate land. For this approach to work effectively, a minimum amount of land being sought is 100, 000 hectares.
The main aim of matching up so much land is to enhance food security and through adequate food production. To be food secure, farm blocs need to be developed in a bid to also create employment.
This provides the backdrop for the development of farm blocs in the country which is tailored to improve livelihoods for small scale farmers.
To actualise this process, a pilot of two farm blocs; Nansenga farm and Luena farm blocs is being undertaken. This pilot will form a basis to roll out to other farm blocs dotted across the 10 provinces of the country.
According to the Land Audit conducted last year reveals only 14 per cent of the 249 farms in Nansenga farm bloc are active despite land being cleared some years ago.
Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture, Principal Agricultural Specialist Stanley Banda empha­sizes the importance of “opening up under developed rural areas in order to reduce poverty and minimise rural urban migration.”
Mr Banda explains this model will enable more options to also process products for the ready market and employment creation. Given the unemployment levels in rural areas, this model will absorb more numbers into the job market hence the necessity to develop the farm blocs. The farm blocs are anchored on an outgrower model, where one or two co-venture farms get to out-source their production from the sur­rounding farms.
He explained that there was need for a business plan to sale the whole idea and also to re-look at prospects of wooing investment.
But for this to happen in an organised manner, there is need to craft a strategy to holistically speak to the farm bloc model. This will inform the effective imple­mentation of the farm blocs in a systematic manner.
Speaking at a prioritisation of Value Chains (Crops) meeting in Lusaka recently, Department of Agriculture Director Chizumba Shepande commends the work of the experts.
He further urged them on the urgent need to concre­tise the development of farm bloc Investment plans.
Dr Shepande noted that “the investment plans where critical for potential funders which includes various stakeholders and the private sector buy into the development of the farm blocs.”
Dr Shepande said that these investment plans will need to incorporate and prepare value chains which offer their comparative advantages going by region. For instance, some soils might be acidic in certain re­gions, where some crops are unlikely to perform well. Such a situation presents experts with the opportunity to assess which crops are likely to thrive amidst the acidic status of the soil in a specific region. This will entail making informed decisions in terms of which value chains will thrive so as to boost productivity and also increase incomes.
Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IA­PRI)is providing technical assistance with financial support from the Global Centre on Adaptation (GSA) to the Ministry of Agriculture in the implementation of the Zambia Growth Opportunities (ZAMGRO) to main­stream climate change in the ZAMGRO project which runs up to the end of this year.
IAPRI Outreach Coordinator Stephen Kabwe stated that the think tank accessed funding from GSA amid the realisation that any value chain requires main­streaming of climate change to boost farmers produc­tion capacities.
“IAPRI’s intervening point is as a result of the pri­oritisation of the value chains, given that the country’s development plans speaks to increased productivity and incomes,” Mr Kabwe emphasized.
In the absence of mainstreaming climate change may have serious implications on the farmers espe­cially productivity and income.
It is clear that if climate change is not properly handled, the outcomes may not be achieved.
Given the expertise offered towards prescribing ap­propriate interventions, what is required is financing to operationalise the farm blocks.
These farm blocks are expected to certainly trans­late into achievable goals of increased production capacities and incomes. – NAIS
Maamba Collieries’ reforestation programme
By CHRISTETER MACHA-CHIZHYUKA
TODAY, humankind is faced with an unprecedented catastrophic environmental challenge such as natural resource depletion, pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change.
These environmental problems are products of the interactions between people and the environment, which largely is due to the thirstiness for social and economic development.
In Zambia and the world over, companies and individuals clear massive pieces of land for agriculture purposes, construction and mining among other activities.
While many companies and individuals strive to get maximum benefits from the environment, they are often unsympathetic, do not always understand and often deny environmental obligations thus creating long term environmental effects.
The mining sector to be specific, small or large mining operations are permanently imprinted across the landscape of Zambia as tons of copper and other minerals are moved out of the bellies of mother earth.
The environmental damage and human health threats that these mining activities create are severe and at times irreversible, affecting generations to come.
Copper or coal for example is not found near the earth surface, thus vast benches and terraces are created so as to reach deeper under the earth’s surface for the product.
It is not unusual to find huge holes and dams left wide open by mining companies especially those involved in open pit mining which is the most widely used technique of mining copper and coal today.
Unlike other mining companies and investors interested in just extracting products from the belly of the earth, Maamba Collieries Limited (MCL) believes that appreciating nature by ensuring restoration after harvesting from it is not only important but a normal thing to do.
Located in Sinazongwe district in the Southern province of Zambia, MCL, a subsidiary of Nava Bharat (Singapore) Pte. Limited is the largest coal mining company in Zambia and the country’s biggest independent power producer.
The production of energy in Zambia is cardinal and MCL accounts for 10 percent of it with the coal-fired Thermal Power Plant (TTP) still being one-of-a-kind project and actually one of the nation’s biggest Public Private Partnership-PPP infrastructure development projects.
The investors ensured that environmentally friendly equipment is used to generate power in addition to making sure that the damaged environment is given full life after mining the coal.
For example, the consumption of thermal-grade coal by the thermal power plant has played a huge role in controlling the pollution of both the air and the waters, restoring the valley town’s picturesque natural landscape, and recovering land for its reforestation programme under the Green Maamba campaign.
While using the thermal grade coal to generate power, the mining company boasts being the largest producer of coal in Zambia with estimated coal reserves of 103 million tonnes of high grade coal from an open cast coal mine which it supplies to over 18 firms in the country.
The team at MCL religiously followed the ZEMA and other international environmental guidelines and demands in all its operations.
Since privatization in 2010, the company has achieved significant improvement in the management of coal dumps, mitigating air pollution caused by spontaneous combustion in the overburdened dumps.
In an interview with the Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS), both the company Chief Executive Officer Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Cyrus Minwalla and Head Corporate Affairs PJ Sudhir confirmed the company’s strict adherence to the management and preservation of the natural environment.
”We are not here to get coal and go or do business and go. Our ethics and values as a company do not permit mining and leaving the environment in disarray. We are here to ensure we leave the environment nurtured and to its original being. Hence we lay down clear plans and activities to see to it that the environment is taken care of and rehabilitated. Only then do we proceed with business,” said Lt Col. Minwalla.
Mr Yotham Phiri is the Senior Safety, Health, Environment and Quality Management-SHEQ Manager charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the planned MCL ‘’Green Belt’’ is implemented and successful.
Thus, a ZANIS news crew that visited the MCL regeneration site partook in the fresh fruits from the transformed dumpsite, now a plantation. This is all efforts by the MCL to protect and help restore the environment.
Mr Phiri explained that the company has embarked on planting trees around Sinazongwe district and MCL operational site and especially the mined voids in keeping with the company’s ‘Clean and Green Maamba’ project.
The rehabilitation programme especially that involves regeneration of trees on huge mined areas, is such an undertaking guzzling thousands of litres of fuel as dump trucks trek through the operation area backfilling up the voids or massive mined areas.
This activity is an ongoing operation under the theme ‘’progressive rehabilitation’’ especially for disposal of ash. And since commissioning of the Thermal Power Plant in 2016, 22 hectares of ash has been rehabilitated, making the mining area clean and green.
The whole exercise demands that each identified void or mined area some as deep as 70 metres deep is filled with soil and used ashes, thoroughly compacted and a variety of saplings planted thus leaving the environment as clean as it was before the mining activities.
“MCL is committed to the management and preservation of the natural environment. To supply the needed samplings required for the environment rehabilitation, we maintain a nursery that produces a variety of tree species including indigenous ones like masau and mubuyu (baobab),” explained Mr Phiri while reaching out for a juicy ripe guava from one of the trees.
The tree planting drive at MCL which commenced in 2018 has been undertaken religiously so much that to-date a total surface area of 48 hectares has been rehabilitated, and 50,000 samplings so far planted,
“Since 2018, Izuma A Waste Rock Dumpsite covering 15 hectares, Old Ash Pond with 10 hectares, 12 hectares on the New Ash pond and 10 hectares of the Golf Club Extension have been rehabilitated. Trees are growing there now,’’ the proud Senior MHEQ Manager said.
Some of the saplings planted on rehabilitated areas include the indigenous masau, acacia, mulberry, flamboyant, tamarind (busika), moringa, neem tree, baobab, siamese cassia, cashew nut, blue berry, mopani, guavas, mangoes and caster apples from India to name but these few.
Unlike the baobab trees that grow very slowly, the masau fruit commonly harvested also in Luangwa district grows for three years before people start enjoying the fruits.
So far Mr Phiri said the masau planted at one of the dumpsites in 2018 are ready for eating just like other fast growing fruits.
In all this restoration of nature around MCL operational area exercise, women have been at the centre of planting and nursing the trees.
“Before MCL came, we used to see mined areas left open, water would collect and ash polluting the area. Now, it is clean and green, we plant trees each time an area is filled with soil after mining,’’ Elizabeth Muwena said as she prepared to go to the plantation to tender the trees.
It is against all these nature restoration operations and many other environmentally friendly ways of doing business that MCL bagged the prestigious “Environmental Award 2012”, from Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA),
Further, the company’s sustained regulatory compliance with a clean record, demonstrated commitment to continuous environmental improvement and utilization of Best available Environmental Technology (BET) and Best Environmental Practices (BEP) were duly recognized by ZEMA by according the Company “Environmental Award for Overall Contribution to Sound Management Practices in Industry 2016″.
Even as the company focuses its plans of expanding the thermal energy generation, Lieutenant Colonel Cyrus Minwalla (retired) pointed out that MCL management is deeply committed to not only protect the environment but also rehabilitate it.
“The expansion plan is to move from 300MW to 600MW and land has already been identified. Even as we expand, our tree planting initiative on voids will continue so that the environment is protected and regenerated,’’ Lt Col Minwalla said. – ZANIS

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