AfricaPress-Tanzania: THERE are always positive words to describe the importance of having a farmer in the community, not because they are part and parcel of the society, but because they form the backbone of country, when it comes to putting food on our tables.
These are the men and women who work in the searing heat and bitter cold to put food on our tables and clothes on our backs.
They rise with the sun to tend to crops and stay up late to review accounts. They fight off invasive insects and battle unpredictable weather, you name it.
However, the agricultural system will only run if there are crops being grown with genuine/right inputs and harvested in abundance.
This chain becomes abused when some dishonest traders hoodwink the farmers with fake fertilisers, seeds and others inputs just to mint extra coin.
To come to the rescue of the farmers, our ‘Sundaynews’ yesterday ran a story of where the Minister for Agriculture, Japhet Hasunga officially launched a special technology known as ‘T-HAKIKI’ that detects authenticity of agricultural inputs, especially pesticides and fertilities purchased for a farmer’s use.
Further shedding light on the device, T-HAKIKI is an electronic verification system where a farmer can dial *148 *52 # and enter numbers in the scratch panel, seed packets or on a pesticide bottle to confirm how genuine it is.
Speaking at Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation (TTCL) pavilion at the ongoing Nane Nane National Exhibition in Simiyu region, Mr Hasunga said the machine would help local farmers detect counterfeit inputs in the market, especially the ones with copied branding and packaging or partially diluted and sold to them as genuine products.
“As a result of fake products, there have been many challenges created in the agricultural sector, despite it being an important sector that contributes in increasing production in the national economy. In reality it will boost morale and a real savior to our farmers,” he added.
This collectively means that the TTCL innovation is in the right direction towards supporting the government to improve agricultural sector in the country and provide not only meals on our tables, but provide fresh and uncontaminated foodstuffs to everyone.
We are told that the T-HAKIKI was designed by the TTCL in partnership with Quincewood Group Limited and other agricultural sector stakeholders, including the Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute (TOSCI) and Tropical Pesticides Research Institute (TPRI) that implies, as Tanzanians, we have all the potentials to address our challenges without necessarily waiting to be directed on how to solve our problems.
