AgDevCo expands portfolio in Mozambique with new investment
Photo: Minister of Agriculture Celso Ismael Correia on Facebook
Around 1,000 farmers from 17 agricultural associations in central Mozambique will now have access to machines to dry fruit, preventing it from spoiling, the authorities have announced.
Half of Manica province’s organic production is lost after the harvest due to a lack of processing, a situation aggravated by the ban on exports to the south of the country since 2008 due to the fruit fly.
“We want to see if farmers can prepare and dry the fruit by themselves,” the minister of agriculture and rural development, Celso Correia, said on Thursday, as he handed over 17 dryers to farmers in Macate, Manica.
According to the minister, the transfer of technology under the Sustenta programme – which seeks the integration of family farming in valuable markets – “will make all the difference” to farmers from Manica, Sofala and Inhambane provinces.
In all, it is planned to deliver 50 fruit dryers, with electric autonomy, through solar panels, allocated in the three provinces classified as the country’s orchards.
João Godinho, a fruit grower, loses half of the 400 tons of production of five species of organic fruit.
With the dryer, he will invest in processing during the “season of the superabundance of fruit” to ensure availability throughout the year.
Because the levels of post-harvest losses were so high, they discouraged production, the secretary of state of Manica, Edson Macuacua said.
So much so that, “in a province with high levels of organic fruit production, we consume fruit imported from far away and of lower quality”, he said, while speaking at the ceremony.
He said that the investments were moving farmers from a historical situation of “subsistence” to producing “for the market”.
The initiative was supported by €10 million of Austrian cooperation.
The project is part of the European effort for the economic and agricultural recovery of thousands of families devastated by Cyclone Idai in 2019, said Lisa Bover, the representative in Mozambique.
ALSO READ: Mozambique: Austrian cooperation funds fruit growing with €10 million – RM
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