Africa-Press – Angola. The province of Huambo expects, in the 2022/2023 agricultural campaign, a harvest of around 115 thousand tons of various crops, with emphasis on maize, sorghum, rice and wheat.
These data were advanced by the director of the Provincial Office for Agriculture and Fisheries, António Daniel Camuty, in an interview.
According to the official, the main production in Huambo results from the contribution of the family sector, but the business sector cannot be neglected, which has a wider area, over 50 hectares of land already prepared.
António Camuty also said that, for this year, they are perfectly convinced that the business sector will give a strong boost to cereal production.
As for the seeds available to support farmers, they have around 1,100 tons of different seeds, with emphasis, as already advanced, on maize, sorghum, rice and wheat.
In this perspective, he detailed that the seeds of maize and sorghum are already being distributed. That of rice still, as the sector is carrying out a promotion program since there is, at the moment, little receptivity to the cereal crop on the part of the producers.
Regarding wheat production, the provincial director stressed that the wheat season has practically passed, but the agriculture sector has 40 tons available for distribution to the main producers in the Central Plateau region, mainly in the municipalities from Tchicala-Tcholoanga, Ecunha, Londuimbali and Bailundo.
Families involved
For this agricultural year, the sector has accounted for around 260,000 peasant families mobilized to guarantee food assistance within rural communities and beyond. However, describes António Camuty, according to the cultivation system itself, it is done in association and the main crop is corn.
“As you know, every producer bets on the production of corn because it is the basis of the fundamental food here in the Central Plateau region. , just to see if we can estimate a production of around 900 kilos of maize, each family is talking about another 100 thousand tons”, he said.
António Daniel Camuty stated that the problem is that most families produce in a rainfed system, that is, they depend on the rains, since few farmers resort to small irrigation systems. Therefore, he said, the drought has been a big problem.
The 2020/2021 agricultural campaign, despite the difficulties experienced, according to the manager, can be considered perfect due to the regularity of the rains. For this year, although there are still no forecasts in terms of satellite, either at the level of SADC, as well as INAMET, it is expected that there will be regular rain in the province of Huambo.
On the other hand, the provincial government, through the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, has supported, as far as possible, cooperatives and peasant associations, as well as individual producers, because, as is known, work tools are not produced in Angola, but imported. Even so, the continuity of support is part of the sector’s package, despite the few means that the sector received, allowing them to distribute around 3,000 hoes and other instruments, such as machetes, plows and respective implements, motor-pumps, mechanized equipment semi-seeders, motor-cultivators, among other means.
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