Mozambique institutes agro-input fairs

Despite a chain of misfortunes, 75-year-old Gonçalves Mandlate faithfully works his plot soon after sunrise each day, hoping that his life, and those of the five grandchildren who live with him, will improve. Recently, thieves stole Mandlate's prize possessions : a hoe, a watering can and his radio. But even then he did not give up farming; he improvised. He has also lost crops due to frequent droughts and during the devastating floods of 2000.

However, in April this year Mandlate had a welcome boost. He and about 2,250 other farmers in the so-called Zonas Verdes ("Green Zones", in Portuguese) around the capital of Maputo benefited from an "Input Trade Fair."

The fairs are part of a national programme implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture with support from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, donor agencies and international non-governmental organisations, whereby vouchers with a cash value are distributed to farmers most in need of assistance instead of giving them kits of seeds and tools.
The beneficiaries can spend the vouchers only during a fair, purchasing agricultural supplies of their choice from local companies which then cash in their vouchers the same day.

Laurence Hendrickx, a representative of the Flanders International Co-operation Agency, a Flemish governmental body which supports the programme, says, "It is an intervention that is somewhere between emergency and development. The government gives the means to farmers in need of assistance to produce food for the coming year, and moreover food that they choose - and at the same time stimulates the local economy by (facilitating) buying from local companies."

The hope is that obliging farmers to support the local economy will strengthen it for years to come, enabling the immediate development gains of aid to be sustainable over the long term.

Tens of thousands of farmers in the flood or drought affected provinces have now benefited from the project, which was first extended nationally in 2003, and hundreds of thousands of dollars are estimated to have been pumped into the local economy as a result.

IPS