Rethinking Agriculture: Focus on Small-Scale Integration
Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg has urged for innovative approaches to teaching integrated farming, suggesting starting with a few crops first and incorporating livestock.
He emphasized minimal ploughing and very low fertilizer usage, encouraging farmers to integrate livestock for manure production.
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“Integration means having compost and manures, like the East is doing, whether using animal waste from goats, cows, or chickens for the manure,” said the minister.
Strategic Farming for Growing Populations
With Africa’s population rising and land holdings shrinking, Rijkenberg stressed the need for strategic small-scale agriculture.
“Less than half of agriculture land on SNL is cultivated every year which has potential. How do you make a one-hectare piece of land commercial and have a farmer manage it all year round?” he questioned.
He noted that Eswatini had adopted a Western commercial approach, while Eastern countries had successfully cracked integrated farming.
Proposed Initiatives for Homesteads
Rijkenberg proposed that 100,000 homesteads participate in a tree-planting scheme, with each homestead planting 20 trees, creating a large-scale, small-farmer-driven project.
The minister highlighted the need for public-private partnerships (PPPs) to provide ready financing or credit guarantee schemes for farmers.
Financial Support and Market Readiness
“We need a fund of over E1 billion so that when that farmer needs finance, we provide it—whether to buy seeds, farming inputs, or sows,” explained Rijkenberg.
He emphasized involving financial institutions, agro-processors, exporters, and the supply chain, ensuring farmers have guaranteed markets, including for pork processing and potential exports.
“So when we start producing more pork than the country can use, we are ready to export,” he added.
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