The government of Namibia has commenced implementation of the Dry Land Crop Production Program.
Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform spokesperson Jona Musheko confirmed the report and said the program has been rolled out in ten crop-growing regions of the country to improve productivity. The program is aimed at enhancing crop production and boosting yields amid a number of natural disasters.
All the dry land crop producing regions both communal and commercial areas received a very poor crop harvest this season, which is exceedingly below the average production and lower than last season’s harvest.
Youth participation
“To date, an average of 40,000 farming households benefited from subsidized plowing, planting and weeding services, as well as agricultural inputs such as improved seed varieties, fertilizers on annual basis through this program,” he said.
Musheko said the program is deliberately targeting youths to improve their participation in the sector and aims to mitigate against low and variable rainfall, thereby creating climate resilience to farmers.
The Agriculture sector remains central to the lives of the majority of the country’s 2.28 million population. The sector, directly or indirectly, supports over 70% of the country’s population and can be divided into two distinct sub-sectors (i) capital intensive, relatively well developed and export oriented commercial sub-sector which covers about 44% of the country’s 824,268 km2 total land area, though it accommodates only 10% of the population, and (ii) subsistence-based, high-labour, low-technology communal sub-sector which covers 41% of the total land area and accommodates about 60% of the population.
