One of the country’s agriculture experts, Tamani Nkhonomvula has appealed to farmers to diversify their production and also abide by good practices that should minimize post-harvest losses ahead of food crop harvest this season.
Nkhonomvula made the appeal on Tuesday in an interview with Malawi News Agency (Mana) saying climate change continue to negatively affect food crop production in a number of ways including the extreme weather events causing river flooding, prolonged droughts and excessive rains.
“These have direct effects on agricultural sector which in turn affect entire food system of the country, farmers need to diversify their production because most of the weather events affect maize production.
“There are other crops that are relatively adaptive to some of the challenges that climate change brings” he said, adding, cassava, sweet potatoes are drought resistant and do well in most parts of Malawi.
The agricultural expert therefore called on government to provide the much needed extension services that should encourage farmers to plant drought resistant crops.
“Government should also take action on this by providing resistant crops to farmers and invest into science and technology to ensure that we have more of climate smart technologies that farmers could use in adapting to climate change,” said Nkhonomvula
He then advised farmers to continue adhering to post harvest management guidelines provided to them by agriculture extension service providers in their respective areas.
One of the farmers, Frighton Njolomole agreed with the agricultural expert’s sentiment on the need for crop diversification saying this was a right move in the right direction to sustain livelihood of many farming Malawians.
Malawi has experienced long dry spell at the start of the current agricultural season.
