Swaziland Minister of Agriculture Moses Vilakati has said that the government is developing decentralised market centres (pack houses) to support commercial vegetable production in rural areas. The programme aims to guarantee vegetable supply in a time of climate change and the production will be worth about E4 million, with over 200 farming households set to benefit.
“The underlying objective is to increase the amount of quality and value of produce sold by farmers on Swazi Nation Land through the National Agricultural Marketing Board's (NAMBoard) new initiative of developing a market led value chain proposition,” he said.
The programme would develop four pack houses with a capacity of about 20 tonnes each and four fully fledged pack houses with a capacity of 200 tonnes each.
“Each mini pack house should yield about 3 000 metric tonnes of vegetables annually, valued at just over E4 million if achieved,” he said.
The pack houses would be developed at Mankayane, Lundzi, Lomahasha and Mpatheni.
The minister said at Mankayane they were still waiting for site confirmation, at Lundzi land had been secured and now were currently working on the designs. He said construction would be finished before the year elapsed at Lundzi.
At Lomahasha development was complete and fully functional, whereas at Mpatheni it was almost done and they were waiting for the cold room and irrigation installation.
The Mpatheni market led development scheme was sponsored by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
Vilakati said Mpatheni would support three schemes which were Mpatheni, Nkhungwini and Nhletjeni with about 100 combined hectares at full capacity.
(1 Swazi Lilangeni=0.061 USD)
Source: observer.org.sz
