Farmers at Shadikongoro green scheme see strong sales

Small-scale farmers at the Shadikongoro green scheme in the Kavango East region are enjoying strong sales, driven by a growing local market.

The assistant farm manager, Lima Kativa, says demand for their produce remains high.

Kativa recently told The Namibian that the scheme’s small-scale farmers are currently harvesting vegetables such as watermelons, pumpkins, onions and butternuts, and that their produce is selling well.

“This region is big and the population is high. People are buying the produce in numbers,” said Kativa.

He said another contributing factor is that the Kavango East region borders Angola and Botswana. Therefore, people from these countries also frequent the green scheme to buy produce. The Shadikongoro green scheme is 20km from Divundu.

Meanwhile, Kativa said they are currently planting maize and very soon they will start processing oil from the stored sunflower seeds.

He said the green scheme has made a request to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Land Reform to give them a new machine for pressing oil from the sunflower seeds as the one they have now is old.

In May last year, the green scheme harvested 24 hectares of sunflowers to produce cooking oil on site.

Katiyoma Johannes, a small-scale farmer at the Shadikongoro green scheme, told The Namibian that they are indeed producing plenty of vegetables and that local communities are buying from them.

However, he says they could earn more if the Agro Marketing And Trade Agency (Amta) lived up to its purpose – to purchase vegetables from them.

He says AMTA was established to buy vegetables from small-scale farmers, but it is currently not doing so, which has led them to sell to local communities instead.

“We could make more money if Amta was buying our produce. We could make even N$100 000 from our harvest, not N$20 000,” says Johannes.

He says that while many of his colleagues now sell only to local communities, he has recently found a market for his produce at Choppies.

Johannes also highlights the lack of storage facilities for produce at the green scheme.

In total, there are 14 small-scale farmers at the Shadikongoro green scheme. He adds that, due to the long distance from the green scheme to Rundu, where Amta is located, the organisation has chosen to buy vegetables from small-scale farmers at the Uvunghu-Vungu and Sikondo green schemes.

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