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Green belt Authority drills Karonga farmers

 Green Belt Authority project manager Synoden Kausi has called for collaboration in the implementation of Nthola-Ilola Ngosi Rice Irrigation Scheme in Karonga which is expected to take off soon.

He made the call during a five-day training of Water Users Association and traditional leaders ahead of the start of the project works on the site.

Rice production can change farmers’ lives

Kausi said if farmers are equipped with knowledge and skills on how the scheme is supposed to run, it will be easy to achieve the goals.

He said: “The Water Users Association members, who are also farmers, are the ones who will run the scheme.

“As you may be aware, the land we are to use belongs to the famers and we need them to sustain the scheme using the skills and knowledge we are imparting to them.”

Nthola-Ilola-Ngosi

 Water Users Association president Osward Gondwe thanked the Green Belt Authority for the project.

He said for a long  time farmers have been growing rice at a small-scale, thereby getting low profits due to lack of skills on how to promote their farming activities.

“We were missing such type of knowledge to boost our farming productivity,” said Gondwe.

Karonga district chief irrigations officer John Bvutula urged the famers to use the skills to sustain the scheme.

About 631 hectares (ha) is expected to be used to develop Nthola-Ilola-Ngosi Rice Scheme Project.

The project is expected to have a warehouse and a rice milling plant which will be used for value addition and proper packaging of rice to make it competitive on the local and internal markets.

Malawi has 600 000 ha of land that can be used for rice production

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