It is gratifying to note that through two of its lending companies, Government seems all out to resuscitate the agricultural sector.
Botswana Development Corporation and CEDA (Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Authority) have over the recent past been specifically increasing the momentum to interest investors to go into agriculture.
BDC specifically encourages dairy farming, while CEDA for its part has, to a large extent, been somewhat generic.
It has now become a truism that since independence, a percentage of the GDP agriculture has been on a downward spiral.
Of course, the decline has been due to many factors, chief of which has been a drastic growth in the mining sector.
That aside, the fact of the matter is that there was simply no way as a country we were going to continue as net importers, including for those things that we could easily produce in our backyards.
South Africa, a country that over the years has assured our constant supply now has to satisfy the local need first.
There also are other more lucrative markets than Botswana, which naturally get more preference as they yield more returns for SA farmers.
We have to applaud Government policy shift of rehabilitating and resuscitating agriculture.
For example, it is Government’s express objective to increase the national head to 3 million.
It is also the objective of the Government to significantly increase food self-sufficiency.
Young people in particular have been targeted through such schemes like Young Farmers, which is administered by CEDA.
On the other hand, LEA (Local Enterprise Authority) which has a mandate of training has also come to the party, with particular emphasis on agriculture.
While these are all very good initiatives we want to point out that it will not be easy to attract young people to farming if infrastructure (roads, electricity, and telephone) are not made a part of the overall agricultural renaissance.
There is general belief that many Batswana do not take up agriculture simply because the sector entails a lot of hard work and that through it one gets a life confined to the rural areas while Batswana like a life in the cities.
We beg to differ.
Our take is that the sector attracts fewer people because, from a commercial point of view, it is not very lucrative.
Any venture that is loss making is bound to lose innovative people to those areas that yield better profits. Such has been the case with agriculture in Botswana.
Because the roads linking farms with the markets are invariably bad transporting the produce ÔÇô be it animals or crops, it is a very costly and daunting task.
At the moment, agriculture does not appeal to many people, simply because the inputs and other investments always outstrip the returns.
Of course, the mistake we should not make as a nation is to believe that everybody is going to be a farmer.
A few years ago when government wanted to create jobs and also to broaden the country’s export base, a gross mistake was committed in treating every citizen as a potential businessman/woman.
Thus money was doled out to every Jack and Jill, including to people who by their nature are born workers because they have no interest in committing themselves and their lives to the rigours of running a business.
The end result was a disaster in that the millions proved irrecoverable as many of the businesses could not outlive the assistance from Government.
The situation was much different then, because money was not so much a big issue for the Government of Botswana.
Today’s Botswana is totally different, and going through what is by far the most difficult economic squeeze in years, government wants to get returns on every thebe invested.
We hope as Government gives out its money to kick-start agriculture, lessons from the past will not be forgotten.
But at least we are all agreed that agriculture is the future ÔÇô not only will the sector create employment, it will also fed the nation, while also earning the country the much needed money, especially if we can produce enough to have surplus for export.
