By Paulinah Chiyombo and Rhoda Nyangulu

File Photo: Farmers sleeping for days on fertilizer depots waiting for cheap fertilizer

Karonga, Mana: Karonga District Council has bemoaned the unavailability of UREA fertilizer in some of the district’s selling points due to transportation challenges encountered by the supplier, Smallholder Farmers Fertilizer Revolving Fund of Malawi (SFFRFM).

Director of Agriculture, Environment, and Natural Resources for Karonga District Council, Raphael Mkisi said figures from the district’s Affordable Input Programme (AIP) redeeming progress showed that only 30 percent of the targeted population has acquired the fertilizer.

“Many farmers have failed to access the fertilizer with just 30 percent of them being able to. We hope all the challenges are resolved so that between this week and next week, the farmers hear a different story,” he said.

Mkisi said he was optimistic that once the farmers managed to redeem their inputs, the district will be able to register high yields from this year’s farming season as compared to the previous seasons.

One of the beneficiaries, Mastano Mwamlima from Kasowa EPA said apart from unavailability of the fertilizer, distances between the selling points and their villages  posed as a challenge to them.

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