National Economic Empowerment Fund (Neef) says farmer organisations seeking irrigation loans should be well prepared and ensure that they have stable water source.
Neef chief executive officer Humphrey Mdyetseni said this on Tuesday in Lilongwe when the fund disbursed irrigation loans to Chesamoyo Cooperative in Traditional Authority (T/A) Masumbankhunda and Mniwu Irrigation Scheme in T/A Kalolo in the district.
“The idea is not you having the equipment and it ends there. We want you to have the resources to produce maximum returns for your benefit and also to repay the loans within the stipulated four months and be eligible for the next round,” he said.
Mdyetseni said they introduced the loan to enable farmers willing to venture into irrigation farming to be in groups of 50 to 100 and share the cost for easy repayment.
Senior Chief Masumbankhunda advised the people to take advantage of the loans as a substitute source of income
“If you sell your land today, you are solving an immediate problem but you are also creating more problems for the future because your descendants will have nowhere to live or farm,” he said.
Under the micro-irrigation loan scheme, Neef provides solar-powered irrigation pumps, seed, fertiliser and pesticides to farmer cooperatives.
The 2024/25 preliminary crop production estimates show that Malawi faces a maize deficit of 537 380 metric tonnes (MT) as it will harvest 2 962 620MT against the national requirement of 3.5 million MT.
As such, farmers are expected to produce food to supplement what the country harvested through rain-fed farming
