Kampala — IF our companies exhibited tractors and farming equipment at the agricultural fair that closed yesterday in Jinja.

The companies are Heavy Duty, Farming Equipment Ltd, Massey Ferguson and Ugiran, a Luzira-based company jointly owned by the Government and Iran. The fair was organised by the Uganda National Farmers Federation.

The tractors were displayed alongside other farming equipment, including boom sprayers, seed drills, planters and tipping trailers.

The companies encouraged farmers to mechanise agriculture, citing tremendous benefits: A tractor can plough five acres in one day, while it may take a farmer at least two weeks to cultivate the same piece of land using a hoe.

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Gusau — State Commissioner of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Alhaji Shuaibu Abdulsalam, has said the state has distributed over 42,000 metric tonnes of fertiliser to target farmers since the beginning of this year’s farming season in order to boost and ensure adequate agricultural output and food security in the state.

Abdulsalam stated this while answering questions on allegations of fertilizer diversion, saying the state government on discovering that its subsidized fertilizers are been sold by those who are not genuine farmers adopted the method of selling the products directly to the target farmers.

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Maputo — The Zambezi Valley Planning Office (GPZ) intends to invest 50 million US dollars in building three grain processing plants in the central Mozambican provinces of Zambezia, Manica and Tete.

GPZ general director Sergio Vieira told reporters that work on one of the factories will begin this year in the Tete district of Angonia, and will have the capacity to process about 25,000 tonnes of maize a year.

Angonia, and the neighbouring district of Tsangano, are the main producers of maize and wheat in the province. But due to lack of processing facilities, and the small size of the immediate market, peasants sell much of this maize over the border in Malawi.

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Nairobi — Food production in Tanzania is set to increase to 11.5 million metric tonnes, an additional 600,000 tonnes from last year’s 10.9 million.

This is in line with other countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which predicted recently that food security in the region had improved in 2009 compared with 2008 due to favourable weather.

The high food production figures have helped lower inflation, as the annual headline inflation rate for the year ended June 2009 decreased to 10.7 per cent, compared with 11.3 per cent in the year ended May 2009.

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The American Embassy in Mozambique – in collaboration with the U.S.-Mozambique Chamber of Commerce, Center for Business Promotion, and the Confederation of Business Associations – is hosting a two-day Trade and Investment Conference in the capital Maputo this week.

Todd Chapman, chargé d’affaires at the embassy – there hasn’t been a U.S. ambassador in place since 2007 – says a major focus is making U.S. companies, particularly those operating next door in South Africa, aware of what Mozambique has to offer.

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