Sunday, February 9, 2025

BAMB delivers fertilizer to centers

The Deputy Manager of Public Relations at the Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board, Boipuso Nyatshane, says that they have distributed 4,480 metric tones of fertilizer to various centers around the country in readiness for farmers who would like to buy it in subsidized prices under ISPAAD.

Nyatshane said this when answering a question from The Telegraph on whether they have enough imputs to sell to farmers in the new ploughing season.

“We have already supplied various centres with 4,480 metric tonnes of fertilizers; it is only Jwaneng that we have not yet supplied because it has storage facilities problems,” he said.

On how farmers can accesses the fertilizers, Nyatshane says that all they have to do is to visit their nearest MoA offices where the officials will help them to fill all the relevant forms, which will enable them to buy fertilizers at subsidized prices.

On whether they also have seeds for farmers to buy from them as the MoA recently made an announcement that it does not have seeds to distribute to farmers and farmers would have to buy them then be reimbursement later, Nyatshane said that the government had not awarded them tenders to supply open pollinated varieties that can be issued to farmers under the ISPAAD programme.

He said that, currently, they mainly have black eye cowpeas, which can be sold to farmers under the ISPAAD scheme at all their facilities.

In their statement announcing that the ministry would not be able to supply free seeds to farmers this year, the MoA says that the shortage was, amongst other things, caused by shortage of rainfall in the past rainfall season, adding that it had also affected seed growers.

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