Government distributes tractors

The government of the northern Mozambican province of Nampula has acquired 53 tractors, with their accessories, to stimulate agricultural production.The provincial directorate of agriculture and food security told AIM that the tractors will be distributed to all 23 districts. The first district to receive the tractors was Ribaue, on Tuesday, where ten of the machines were distributed.According to provincial agriculture director Pedro Dzucule, the tractors are part of the government’s agricultural mechanisation strategy. They will be used to implement the provincial government’s agro-business project, through the establishment of agricultural service centres in the districts.The tractors will be hired out to farmers, and Dzucule believed they will greatly increase their productivity, alloing them to cultivate much larger areas.“We feel that we are responding to the needs of the producers by making machines available to increase the cultivated area and produce a lot of food”, he said. “We are contributing to agricultural mechanisation, and our struggle is to make the transition from the short-handled hoe to agricultural machinery, in order to develop agriculture in our province”.As for how much farmers must pay to hire a tractor, a table of prices has yet to be fixed. Angelo Campos Ferreira, of the company Agro-Business Mocambique Ltd, which won the tender to manage the agricultural centres in Nampula, said “We shall define the price in a demicratic fashion, involving all the stakeholders in agriculture, as well as the district administration and the provincial directorate of agriculture. But our intention is to establish a price that is acceptable to peasant farmers”.In addition to the tractors, the Nampula agriculture directorate has acquired 4,000 long handled hoes, to replace the short handled variety.Earlier this month the provincial government acquired and distributed to all the districts 180 pumps, to assist in the production of vegetables.