The unforeseen drought and outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2015 have underlined the urgent need for the Namibian agricultural sector to ensure the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF)’s five-year strategic plan is implemented to the letter.
This strategic plan, launched in 2012, created the opportunity to redirect ministerial efforts to specific strategic focus areas in line with Vision 2030. These focus areas include the development of a policy and a legal environment as well as product, market and infrastructure to redirect resources towards increasing agricultural production. In some regards, like establishing the Agro Marketing and Trade Agency (AMTA), in partnership with Agriculture Business Development (Agribusdev), as well as recent access to China’s massive beef market, great strides are being made to achieve the aims of Vision 2030. But in other respects, it is apparent that a unified effort will be needed to guide the agricultural sector towards utilising all opportunities in both domestic and international markets that would result in the country reaping maximum benefits. The next five years will be crucial for AMTA, as activities that utilise operate the facilities are put in action, as well as the building of infrastructure to facilitate agricultural marketing processes, storage and trading. The strategic objectives are the establishment of a stakeholder partnership, ensuring that the volume traded is kept at a minimum 200 metric tonnes per month per agent at each hub for 2016, as well as ensuring that AMTA is compliant with Food Safety and Total Quality Management requirements by 2018.
AMTA hopes to up its cereal and pulse reserves to 67 000 metric tonnes in line with infrastructure plans by 2018 together with the development of a rotation system that supports local millers, and does not negatively impact prices with a rotational manual and guidelines. This year’s drought severely impacted on these ideals as the National Strategic Food Reserves’ storage capacity, which AMTA is mandated to manage, dropped to about 18 900 tonnes, which is 28% of the targeted national storage capacity. Dismal harvests resulted in massive reduction in the harvest of 46 percent below average, and 49 percent lower than last season’s harvest. Namibia has to import some 201 000 tonnes of cereal this year, while 550 000 inhabitants are in desperate need of food aid.
The drought and outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) was a stark reminder of just how vulnerable the agricultural sector is, and how easily the apple cart can be overturned by such events. For both the crop and livestock sectors, it is imperative that an efficient and effective marketing system is put into place to gain an increased share of and profit from the domestic market and for potential buyers to find quality local products at comparative prices.
“The Namibian Agricultural and Trade Policy and Strategy makes it clear that it is necessary to adopt a marketing orientation approach as opposed to a production orientation approach, whereby production is based on market needs, contrary to the approach where a country only engages in marketing once it has products to market. ”
This would mean stimulating downstream agro-industries, improving competitiveness of the agricultural industries, increasing the local products’ share of the domestic market and increasing agricultural contribution to the national economy.
Agriculture and agro-industries, which contribute more than 5.5 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has a growth rate of some 12 percent per annum, employ about 16 percent of the country’s active workforce and contribute agricultural products in excess of N$5 billion per annum. Specific strategies are set for the livestock and meat as well as for the cereals and horticulture industries. Trade-related strategies must be implemented, taking into account the need for competitive sourcing of production inputs, food security, safeguarding national interests and expanding the market scope for the local industry. Will Namibia succeed in reaching these goals? It is a long walk to Vision 2030. Time will tell.