The government of Tanzania has established a demo-farm in Chemba district, Dodoma region to help improve sunflower farming in the country.
Speaking during the launch on behalf of the Minister for Agriculture, Hussein Bashe, the Director of Crop Development in the ministry, Nyasebwa Chimangu, said the plan would help the ministry in capacity building for extension officers and increase productivity.
He said the efforts were in line with President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s directive that the ministry come up with strategies aimed at improving agricultural production. The programme was equally aimed at empowering extension officers who in turn would train farmers through expert guidance. Under the programme, the district is expected to produce 100,000 tonnes of sunflower in the 2022 season, as part of the effort to increase production of the edible oil in the country.
Strategy
“This is part of the strategy to improve agriculture in rural areas with focus on specific crops. The government has plans to also improve cotton and sunflower growing, among other crops,”
Chemba District Commissioner, Dr Hamisi Mkanachi on his part noted that the authority has laid strategies to improve agricultural production and one of them is to provide subsidized sunflower seeds that are affordable to the farmers.
He said the government introduced the subsidized sunflower seeds in 2021,selling at 7,000/- per two-kilogram bag unlike in the previous year whereby the same amount of seeds was sold at 40,0000/-.
“We have already received 11 tonnes of the improved subsidized sunflower seeds and have sold 4.7 tonnes and I call on farmers to buy the improved seeds in order to increase production in the district,” he said.
He noted that the district authority has distributed six kilograms of seeds to every extension officer in the district and set aside 60 hectares of land to be used as demo-farms to train local farmers. The government has taken various measures to improve sunflower production, such as an improved budget for the Agricultural Seeds Authority (ASA) to 10.8bn/-in the 2021/22 season from 5.42bn/-in 2020/21.
