KALUMBILA AGRO YIELDS IMPROVE

By JACKSON MAPAPAYI

FARMERS in Kalumbila district in North-western province have been recording high yields since the embracing conservation farming, Chief Mumena has said.

He therefore thanked Kansanshi Mine for introducing conservation farming in his chiefdom.

The traditional leader said that since the introduction of conservation farming, farmers in his chiefdom had been recording high yields.

He was speaking during a field day organised by Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) under the theme ‘transforming small holder farmers, our priority’ held Kampande FTC.

And speaking at the same event, acting Kalumbila District Agricultural Coordinator (DACO) Paul Mwansa said that the Mumena farm block accounts for 32 percent of farmers out of 8,752 registered farmers in the district.

Mr Mwansa advised farmers to always engage his office each time they faced any challenges especially in terms of input distribution.

He further advised the farmers to start making their K400 contributions towards inputs under the Farmer Input Support Program (FISP) as the distribution of the inputs would start soon.

This was after Chief Mumena of the Kaonde speaking people called for the protection of rural farmers from unscrupulous agro dealers.

The traditional leader said the rural farmers needed protection because the distribution of farming inputs was in private sector.

He said rural farmers had suffered at the hands of the agro dealers who he said were not distributing the inputs to farmers.

He said Government should come up with a monitoring mechanism that would ensure that agro dealers distribute the inputs on time and according how much each was supposed to receive.