Newsbriefs_May31_2007

Fertiliser production_Zambia : Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ) is to to start the production of Compound-D fertiliser (8:14:7 NPK) after it secured funds to produce 41,000 metric tonnes out of the targeted 65,000 metric tonnes for the 2007/8 farming season. NCZ public relations officer, Katendi Wandi said the maintenance work which closed the plant in March, delaying production, was going well and normal operations were expected to resume soon. She said the company was also using the current down time to replenish raw materials. The firm was working to increase the product base to include production of Ammonia Nitrate later in the year. The company requires about K90.4 billion ($22 million) to produce 65,000 metric tonnes of Compound-D fertiliser. Government, the major shareholder, only allocated K3 billion ($745,000) in this year’s budget for NCZ operations. The company had indicated that it requires a total of about US $33 million for re-capitalisation and working capital.
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Agric. consultations_Swaziland : Swaziland is to embark on regional consultation meetings across the country,leading up to the national Agriculture Summit in July.Noah Nkambule, a senior official in the agriculture ministry, urged farmers and stakeholders to propose innovative concepts and recommendations that could take the agricultural industry forward. He said the meetings were an opportunity for farmers to explore ways in which sustainable agricultural production in Swaziland could be realised. "We would be happy if they were to propose solutions and be constructive rather than just criticise. We do not want the usual rhetoric; we are encouraging stakeholders to provide us with new areas for us to explore in making farming create money for us as a nation," he said.
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Fertiliser support for members_COMESA : A special programme under the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) seeks to have the continent's farm production growing at six per cent annual growth rate by 2015, backed by increased usage of fertiliser. It is envisaged that the plans would push the level of use of fertiliser from the current 8 Kg per hectare to at least 50 Kg per hectare. A communication from the COMESA secretariat shows the pilot phase of the project, approved in 2006 by African heads of state at a fertiliser summit in Nigeria, will kick off in June. Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi are listed as the initial beneficiaries of an allocation of 20,000 metric tonnes of the fertilisers.
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Zambian jatropha concerns : The Zambian government will curtail the cultivation of jatropha if it is established that the biodiesel-yielding crop is harmful to soils and the environment, President Levy Mwanawasa has said. “Some of the literature which I have seen recently shows that jatropha is very bad for our soil and for Zambian agriculture. So my government is busy studying that literature and if in fact we discover that jatropha may in the long-run not be good for our environment, we will have to rethink on the way forward,” he said.
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