BY SETHABILE MYENI
MBABANE – Eswatini farmers are already started harvesting their crops for this season, and some are ready for the market.
This was confirmed by the Center for Financial Inclusion on the pictures they shared on their social media platforms, expressing their confidence from the dedication they are seeing from farmers across the regions.The harvested crops include peaches, green pepper, beetroot and butternut.
NAMBoard Eswatini has promised to help farmers to increase their produce which will then help Eswatini to reduce imports of vegetables such as butternut. Towards achieving that goal, NAMBoard hosted a butternut field day at Gebeni on Wednesday where four different varieties were planted in order to identify the high yielding variety and also one that is more resistant to pests and diseases.
A farmer, Lynn Kota testified that butternut is on high demand and farmers should educate themselves on growing butternut.
“I produced butternut in 2022 but then I stopped because I had borrowed the land. I used to sell to both NAMBoard and informal markets and I managed to break even in one season. I still get calls asking for butternut, unfortunately I could not get land this season,” she said.
NAMBoard Communications Officer, Melusi Dlamini said they have prepared programs that will help farmers to grow their produce.
“We are preparing Programs train farmers on production and post- harvest handling and scheduling of plantings based on seasons and market demand. Farmers should also utilise published vegetable production guides and know that gross margins are also available for them to make estimates of sales and production costs,” said Dlamini.
