At least 1.7 million of the just over four million families whose livelihoods depend on agriculture will have technical assistance from agricultural extension workers by 2024 to increase their production and productivity.
The target is to be achieved within the National Programme of Assistance to Family Agriculture and will include the expansion of the current public extension network from the current 2072 to 7100 extension workers.
The data was presented yesterday in Maputo by Olegário dos Anjos Banze, deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, speaking at the opening of the Periodic Technology Review Meeting On that occasion, he assured that MADER will also invest in the continued training of the 7100 rural extension agents.
More than tripling the current number of extension workers over the next three years and training them, the deputy minister said that the sector guaranteed that it would turn 5,000 of them into small, emerging commercial farmers, making them agents of change in the production system, predominantly from subsistence to agri-business.
He pointed out that the meeting, which brings together representatives of extensionists from all over the country, is essentially intended to ensure the research-extension-producer link by sharing the appropriate agrarian technology packages for farmers in the family sector through technical assistance and rural extension.
“It also aims to identify research areas of great scientific importance and with the greatest impact, with a view to the adoption of agrarian technologies and thus ensuring sustainable socio-economic development,” the deputy minister added.
At the same time, he reiterated that the production of sufficient food for food and nutritional security and of surpluses for placing it on the market is guaranteed by comprehensive technical assistance aimed at the development of communities, localities and administrative posts.
