By KAUSA MBASELA –
BARRICK Lumwana Mining Company (LMC) has pledged to sharpen farmer competitiveness by raising standards of crop quality and hygiene.
Speaking at the closing of a Barrick Lumwana Mining Company five-day food safety training workshop at Mwaaka Lodge in Solwezi, company sustainability manager Brenda Tambatamba said farmers from Mumena, Makumbi and Matebo chiefdoms were now able to supply major international firms like All Terrain Services (ATS) that cater for the mining companies in the province.
In a vote of thanks on behalf of the smallholder farmers, Namwinga Ngoza from Mutanda area thanked the company’s sustainability department for organising the training programme.
“Had it been done earlier, it would have enabled farmers to have more money as the information they have acquired is immense and very enlightening,” Ms Ngoza said.
She assured Barrick Lumwana that the training would help in improving yields and enhance farmers’ access to markets.
Ms Tambatamba noted that the workshop provided an overview of practical and reasonable agricultural practices that could be implemented on farms and in parking houses to reduce the risk of food-borne pathogens on crops.
Some of the key lessons acquired from the training included food safety and quality assurance, how food safety and quality are addressed through control of biological, chemical and physical hazards from initial production, handling, to distribution of the final products to the markets or consumers.
She said financial losses resulting from a food-borne outbreak could be devastating to a business, as there was no way to guarantee that everything grown on a farm was free from harmful microorganisms.
Preventive measures during all phases of production could minimise such risks, she said.
Veria Hampoota, a poultry farmer of Women of Hope Cooperative in Lumwana East, thanked the mining company for enlightening farmers on how to manage manure disposal in a manner that enriched the environment.
She said the safety information she had acquired would boost her production levels by helping to reduce diseases occurring as a result of poor management of manure.