Jumbe to champion farmers’ interests in Parliament

Former Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) president Felix Jumbe says he will champion the interests of farmers if he is elected as member of Parliament (MP) in next year’s polls.

Speaking during a farewell party organised in his honour by the Seed Traders Association of Malawi (Stam) as he ventures into politics, Jumbe said Malawi can only develop if the agriculture sector is revolutionised.

Jumbe, who was also secretary general of Stam since its formation in 2004, said he was proud of what he achieved at Stam.

“We started this organisation to bring sanity to the seed sector to make sure that farmers are not duped by some unscrupulous traders. Today, we have managed to boost the capacity of seed services unit of the Ministry of Agriculture and we have managed to get over 80 percent performance in the Farm Input Subsidy Programme,” said Jumbe.

He said that despite making sure that fake seed do not flood the market, the problem still persist because the market is liberalised.

“We have done a very good job but since the market is liberalised, we still see some pockets of fake seed producers duping our farmers. My message to the farmers is that they must never buy seed from unlicensed agro dealers,” said Jumbe.

He said as a Member of Parliament, he will make sure that he champions the rights of farmers because the country’s economy is agro-based.

“As a country, we made a huge mistake by concentrating on areas that could not help and this is why we are in such a mess today. If we take agriculture, we can be exporting crops throughout the year and solve the persistent forex problems,” said Jumbe.

Chairperson of Stam, Dellings Phiri, commended Jumbe for working hard to bring organisationto where it is today.

When Stam was formed, it only had three members all of them multinationals. They included Monsanto, Seed Co and Pannar but today the body has 24 members most of them local seed companies owned by Malawians.