New FUM boss for mechanised agriculture
New Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) president Alfred Kapichira Banda says farmers will remain poor if they continue to use hoes to till land, stressing the need to mechanise farming.
He ascended to the position of FUM president last month after beating four contestants during the organisation’s annual general meeting (AGM) at Bingu International Conference Centre in Lilongwe.
Kapichira Banda told Business News on Thursday in Lilongwe that farming has the potential to change people’s life if taken seriously.
“I have been a farmer all my life and it pains me a lot to see farmers remain in abject poverty and, yet they are the ones who till the land. My main job will be to galvanise the farmers and encourage them to form cooperatives because through such bodies we can start speaking one language,” he said.
Kapichira Banda said it would be easy to lobby banks and other lending institutions to lend farmers money to buy tractors and farm inputs if they are in cooperatives.
The FUM president, who runs a farm in Lilongwe, said he was inspired by the country’s founding president Hasting Kamuzu Banda who encouraged farming.
“Kamuzu used to tell his ministers that they should concentrate on farming and that is exactly what my father taught me. I have been a lead farmer in my area and I want to use my experience to help other farmers to reach the level which I am,” he said.
Apart from encouraging farmers to form cooperatives, Kapichira Banda said he will encourage farmers to be in groups to easily share experiences.
“If a farmer, for example, grows groundnuts he will be encouraged to be in a groundnut group. If he grows maize, he will be in a maize group. Even those with livestock will be encouraged to form livestock groups so that there is proper and easy dissemination of information among farmers,” he said.
But Kapichira Banda was quick to point out that if a farmer grows three kinds of crops, he or she will be encouraged to join all the three groups because it will be to his own advantage.
Kapichira Banda, who has taken over the mantled from Felix Jumbe, now a Malawi Congress Party (MCP) politician, ventured into farming in 1975.
