Getting into any Botswana Defence Force facility, the key feature in the garrison’s infrastructure is the dining hall and the kitchen. I was raised in a boarding school which in many ways resembled a strict military facility. St Joseph’s College under Patrick Maphorisa as the principal was ruled under strict military orders flowing from top to bottom.
Even here at the college, the dining hall and the kitchen were key cornerstones in terms of the drivers of the institution. This points to the fact that whether its students or soldiers, food is a key commodity. Let us look at how the military in Botswana can contribute as a key contributor to food security in the country.
The military in Botswana and of course anywhere else in the world is a large food consumer. This is why this establishment must be involved in securing food for the country in as much as they plan continuously for the security of our borders. One thing we all need to understand is that there is no dignity in sovereign security when there is no food security.
BDF is one government organization that enjoys reasonable funding compared to other departments. One would not comfortably use the term “well-funded” because military hardware is very expensive by nature. BDF just gets reasonable funding. But truth be told, for a country that has remained so vulnerable in the area of food security, it is time that our defence budget is refashioned to meet our food needs first.
Pandamatenga is a major training ground for recruit privates for the BDF. The military arrived here in 1984 and simultaneously, farmers were arriving here to set up what is now known as the country’s bread basket. It is here that BDF occupies a large chunk of arable land set aside for training.
The land that the military owns here is not just vast but it is also rich black cotton soils. This is an envy of most farmers in the country that is largely sandy. There exists an opportunity for BDF to begin to participate in securing food for the country.
Zambia has the largest National Service project in the continent run by the military. Their focus is on food production. The Zambian military owns large swathes of land across the country and they have placed these lands under food production. This is something that our military should be following so that they lead by example.
One of the things that BDF needs to introspect into is the training of our soldiers. After the pass-out parade or the commissioning of officers, the course for both cadres should be allowed to stay on at a BDF created farm in Pandamantega. The extension could be as long as five months in order to cover the entire rainy season.
For people who were born between 1950 to 1980, they were largely raised in rural Botswana where every home produced their own. This is no longer the case as the new generation only thinks food is produced in supermarkets. The diamond boom has been the genesis of our path to food insecurity and we need to reverse this culture.
Zambia has lately become one of the major food producers in Africa and the military has played a key role in this great achievement. Zambia used to be a key food producer in the pre-independence years. They began to regress the moment when the country’s economy experienced a boom through the sale of copper. Equally so, diamonds have been a poison for Botswana’s agriculture.
The major reason why BDF must participate in agriculture is for the fact that the institution has taken up a significant number of able bodied persons from the mainstream labour force. In fact it is this age bracket that is high in food consumption and hence the need to balance the deficit.
Further to the Pandamatenga land, the military also has a huge camp in Paje near Serowe which displaced a lot of farmers when it was created in 1990. The fields that were taken from farmers with little or no compensation have been lying idle to this day. The camp measures over eight hundred hectares and it is ideal for cattle farming.
BDF needs to copy the Zambian military model because it is working and produces significant amounts of food which feeds into the country’s grain reserves. The reason why Zambia has made a comeback in agriculture after dumping it for mining has been for the efforts of the military. Zambian military farms produce at a commercial level. They export sugar and molasses from their cane farms and industries.
BDF has made attempts at agriculture in the past and this has largely in the area of dairy production. The military here continues to run Diana Farm and Pitsane Farms with a significant population of dairy cows. The main customer for their production has been Clover Botswana. This was a modest contribution to the economy by ordinary soldiers. But the generals had other thoughts about the two dairy projects.
Pitsane and Diana Farms are now producing more of sour milk than fresh milk. The generals and other senior officers are having their needs for sour milk met and the contribution that the farms used to make toward milk in the country has been curtailed.
The farms are very costly to run. Unlike the Zambian military model which uses cheap labour from the National Service pool, the BDF pays the trained soldiers to achieve its production. They are provided with decent accommodation and earn higher salaries.
There is actually room for BDF to use young able bodied persons for their agricultural production and achieve greater results. In fact such a scheme has been tried in the past and there were two batches of National Service participants that worked at the Pitsane Farm. Some of these participants in what was known as Tirelo Sechaba ended up joining the officer corps of the BDF.
