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Brace for soaring food prices, Agriculture minister warns
2008-07-23 10:05:18
By Bilal Abdul-Aziz, Dodoma
Tanzanians should brace for sustained soaring food prices for at least ten years to come, thanks to unprecedented global demand, soaring oil prices and climate change, the National Assembly heard yesterday.
Unveiling budget estimates for his ministry for the 2008/09 fiscal year in Parliament here, Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives minister Stephen Wassira said food prices would continue in their upward trend despite efforts being made to solve the problem.
Quoting a recent Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)-backed report, the minister said despite increasing food production around the world, soaring prices were here to stay over the next ten years, just as was the case over the last ten years.
``A report released by the United Nations food agency - FAO - last April on food crop production shows good harvests in the southern African region, except Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique,``he said.
However, he said the country's food situation was stable, advising the lawmakers that the country would produce 10.78m tonnes, which would satisfy the nation's demand by 104 per cent.
The minister said the government, through the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA), which replaced the former Grain Strategic Reserve (SGR) whose activities were disbanded, planned to buy 100,000 tonnes of cereals.
Regarding the Green Revolution, he said his ministry would achieve the initiative through short and long-term programmes, along with sustaining achievements on food security over the last year.
Wassira outlined 18 strategies for achieving the programmes, including plans to subsidize 130,000 tonnes of fertilizers, 3,000 tonnes of quality seeds and 2,000 tonnes of pesticides.
``The objective here is to increase the use of fertilizers, from 9 kilogrammes of nutrients in 2007/08 to 11 kilogrammes over the 2008/09 financial year,`` said Wassira.
Other strategies outlined by the minister included training, setting out realistic targets for each region and district, involvement of leaders, politicians and practitioners at all levels and improving extension services.
On the list of short-term strategies also were encouraging non-cereal crops, particularly cassava, sweat potatoes and bananas, improving productivity from an average of 2 tonnes per hectare to between 4.5 and 6 tonnes, and identifying production potentials on food crops by the use of agro-ecological zones.
Under the long-term programme, Wassira said the government would increase the use of fertilizers and other agricultural inputs, facilitate agricultural crops processing, improving irrigation schemes, investing more on agricultural research and establish the agricultural bank.
Wasira asked the House to endorse a budget of 113,737,050,400/-. Out of the total budget, 93,704,218,000/- would be spent for recurrent and 20,032,832,400/- for development expenditures.
The House is set to discuss and endorse the budget today.
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