Niassa Food Crop Harvest Surpasses Target

Cuamba

21 June 2011

Maputo — Mozambique’s northernmost province of Niassa produced over 878,000 tonnes of food crops in 2010 – thus exceeding the target figure of 850,130 tonnes by 3.3 per cent.

According to data presented by the provincial government on Monday to President Armando Guebuza, the 2010 harvest was 25 per cent larger than the 2009 harvest of 704,201 tonnes.

The average yield for food crops rose from 1.7 tonnes to 1.8 tonnes per hectare between the two harvests, and the provincial government is optimistic that this year yields will reach an average of two tonnes per hectare.

However, the figure for cash crops is not so bright. The target was 34,873 tonnes – but only 25,493 tonnes were produced, lower than the 2009 figure of 26,381 tonnes. In part, this was because peasant farmers stopped growing castor oil seed.

The entire production of cash crops was sold in 2010, and 43,706 tonnes of food crops, out of the 46,500 planned. In 2009, 32,167 tonnes of food crops were marketed – there has thus been a 36 per cent increase in the marketing of foodstuffs.

These figures would suggest that the vast bulk of the food produced in Niassa is for the consumption of the farmers and their families – but it is also likely that many of the informal sales of food, and particularly the sales of crops over the border, into neighbouring Malawi, go unrecorded.

In 2010, the provincial government provided technical assistance to 714 peasant associations, with 15,596 members, and the number of rural extensionists working in the province rose from 89 to 117.

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