Local crops key to climate change
Find Your Feet (FYF) organisation has urged farmers in the country to grow local crops because they easily adapt to the effects of climate change which is a challenge in the country.
Speaking on Friday at a Seed and Food Fair in Rumphi, FYF country director Chakalipa Kanyenda said farmers should grow local crops as an alternative to the hybrid ones rather than abandoning them completely.
He said: “We have noticed that farmers are forgetting and abandoning local crops. Even the way of cooking them is a problem. We have therefore introduced a crop programme to promote cultivation and preservation of local crops for farmers to have a diversity of nutritious foods.
“The programme also promotes cultivation of local crops because such crops easily adapt to the effects of climate change and produce food as usual even when rains are scarce.”
Kanyenda said local crops are also important because they do not demand a lot of money to cultivate.
“Farmers in villages may not have money to buy fertiliser for hybrid crops. But for local crops, they don’t need to spend money on fertiliser,” he said.
The Crop Programme is being implemented in Mzimba and Rumphi. Some of the local crops being promoted and preserved include finger millet, sorghum, groundnuts, maize, bambara, yams, cowpeas, pigeon peas, sesame, beans and cucurbits.
FYF is implementing the programme in partnership with Biodiversity Conversation Initiative (BCI) with funding from Development Fund of Norway.
