By Malawi Exclusive
President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera has said despite the devastating weather effects and unpredictable rain patterns, everything is not lost. The Malawi leader urged farmers to take advantage of the situation, especially late rains to plant other crops after harvesting.
“After interaction with the farmers here I must say I am impressed. The interaction has given me hope that all is not lost yet, we can still salvage something if we take advantage of the weather here,” said Chakwera.
He observed that with the late rains the soil moisture content is still high, and farmers can plant other crops after harvesting.
“Some of these things do not necessarily need technical expertise or special training. We just need to make full use of the available resources. The rainfall pattern is no longer predictable as it used to be and when the rains come, we all saw what happened this year the rains came along with devastating effects so when an opportunity presents itself lets fully utilise it,” said Chakwera.
The President urged the farmers to embrace such crop diversification if the country is to be food secure.
Chakwera was speaking in Nkhotakota after touring crops in the district as part of his ongoing nationwide crop inspection tour.
Among the many field Chakwera inspected a field belonging to Getrude Ng’ona.
In her address to the President, Ng’ona asked the President to consider if the government would invest in winter cropping and help farmers with technical support in such winter cropping.
“After harvesting this maize, we can plant again. Our main challenge is we don’t have the technical knowhow of winter cropping so if you can help us we will really appreciate,” said Ng’ona.
Agriculture Minister Lobin Lowe also asked Chakwera to consider legalising the cultivation of any form of cannabis in the country. Hemp has recently become one of the most sort after crops and fetching a good price on the global market and Lowe said what Malawi needs is to legalise the cultivation of any form of the plant while enforce regulations against smoking the same.to take advantage of the current global trends
“It does not make sense for us to be impounding tonnes and tonnes of cannabis and later burning it when our friends outside the country are longing for this same product which is fetching huge money on the market,” said Lowe.
President Lazarus Chakwera is on a national crop inspection tour which started from the Southern Region and this week he is in the northern region.
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