Affordable Inputs Programme to Uplift Living Standards
By Tione Andsen
Lilongwe, October 28, Mana: Government has Affordable Inputs Programme AIP was designed by government to uplift the living standards of farmers in the country.
Minister of Agriculture, Lobin Lowe said this Wednesday during a Press briefing in Lilongwe on AIP update
He advised smallholder farmers in the country to maximize the use of the inputs in order to improve food security at household levels.
Lowe disclosed that government has contracted 83 private fertilizer suppliers and two public institutions to supply and retail fertilizer to programme beneficiaries and has contracted 11 seed suppliers to supply and retail their seed to beneficiaries.
The Minister said that currently there was 166,437MT in the country’s warehouses and 17, 844MT in the various retailing markets across the country.
He said that about 178,354MT of fertilizer was in transit and would be delivered to retail markets in the coming weeks.
Lowe added that some companies have imported 3,000 metric tonnes of seed and 9,092 metric tonnes have been delivered in the retail markets.
He said in order to increase the credibility of our farm household database, the updating exercise adopted use of National Identity Cards.
“It was mandatory that every farm household head should be identified by the National ID numbers. This database was then submitted to the National Registration Bureau to check against its database, as part of the cleaning process, to ensure that similar records are maintained,” the Minister added.
He said this process has revealed some challenges including: improper capturing of farmer’s National ID numbers, some farmers were sharing one ID number and other farmers had no IDs.
He explained this process resulted in back and forth exchange of the farm household registers between NRB and the concerned districts to make sure that they conform to the NRB registers in terms of ID details.
The process has unearthed some duplication and registering of minors in some households for the purpose of increasing of the opportunities to benefit from the program,” Lowe disclosed.
AIP Coordinator, Justin Kagona called for cooperation of all stakeholders in the implementation of the programmes.
He said proper utilization of the AIP items would help the country to improve food security at the household levels.
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