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Emulate Coast Region’s plan to boost agriculture
2006-05-26 09:34:23
By Editor
Coast Regional Commissioner, Dr Christine Ishengoma, recently made a marvelous strategy for the region, which is likely to revolutionise agro-production.
The plan is: The region will organise agro-competitions from regional to village levels as of from this year.
The spirit of the contests will be to promote competitive cash and food crop production.
The RC gave the directive to institutions, districts, wards and village leaders to take up leading roles in organizing the competitions.
Individuals, villages, organisations and all the districts, will be encouraged to take part in the contests, where participants would be free to choose what projects to feature based on environmental conditions of particular areas, according Dr Ishengoma.
The RC said she had already informed District Commissioners, Members of Parliament, Regional and District Executives, religious leaders, institutions and NGOs about the plan.
She emphasized that the competitions would not just be about crops but will involve livestock keeping, fisheries, beekeeping, forestry and even fruit and vegetable gardens management as all of these are part of agriculture and contribute greatly to poverty eradication.
Dr Ishengoma said farmers should be encouraged not only to grow food crops but also cash crops like cotton, cashew nuts, simsim, coffee and coconuts.
What the RC had in mind when mooting the idea was to promote standards of living for the people in Coast Region, first by ensuring they attain food security and secondly produce extra food for sale.
We would like to commend the RC for the noble idea, bearing in mind the role agriculture plays in the country’s economic growth.
We cannot gainsay the importance of agriculture as it contributes about half of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs over 80 per cent of the country’s populace.
That is why programmes like the one mooted by Coast Region need to be supported wholeheartedly as they offer hope of better lives for the common mwananchi.
At the same time, we would like to request the RC to ensure involvement of all stakeholders in the region when designing a rewarding system for the winners.
For the contests to have the desired effect there must be rewards for the winners that are appealing enough to make the masses want to compete.
The RC also did not release the modalities of the contests, which we hope are already in place or will be set up as quickly as possible including setting of the timeframe and the way forward.
Despite, those little shortcomings, which can be fixed easily, we would like to say the RC move is timely considering the recent famine, which as nation we are just reeling from its effects.
Coast Region is potentially productive agricultural area but little in the new past has been done to encourage increased production.
Dr Ishengoma’s initiative, which seeks to solicit the will of the farmers, while at the same time offering rewards for their efforts could just be what the region need for agricultural revival.
Maybe such a pertinent approach in a society where people do not like to be ordered to do things even for their own benefit but would rather work their own way, if adopted by each region, would greatly help the country become self sufficient in food production.
The spillovers would be used to expand agro export and industrial processing baskets.
We call on other regions to emulate the plan or moot better ideas for an agro- revolution to become real.
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