By George Bulombola

Mzuzu, June 21, Mana: Deputy Director of Agriculture Extension Service in the Ministry of Agriculture, Kenneth Chaula Friday said the Ministry would from July 1 to 30, 2024 conduct farm household registration across the country in order to have one stock centre for updated agricultural information.

He was speaking in Mzuzu during the Ministry’s engagement meeting on National Agriculture Management Information System with Traditional leaders, District Commissioners and Agriculture staff employees drawn from all districts in the north.

Chaula said the initiative has been necessitated to address some of the challenges which the Ministry has been facing in programming, quantifying needs for farming communities and providing information to agriculture stakeholders including policy makers among others.

“So we want to ensure that agriculture information is collected and stored and disseminated to stakeholders using NAMIS.

Using NAMIS, we will collect information which include, number of farming households and their agricultural interventions, market information, programmes running at district, area planning extension and traditional authority levels,” he said.

The Deputy Director added that the initiative would be a catalyst in pursuing agriculture productivity and commercialization as enshrined in the Malawi 2063.

“This this system, we will be assured of providing real needs of farming communities across the country,” he said.

Chaula said the intervention would ensure that ineligible households are not registered for programmes that do not directly address their needs.

He pointed out that the system would register both households and land parcels to establish farm land hectares and categorize farmers in terms of their agriculture needs hence contributing to effective programming based of the households’ capacities.

Senior Chief Mwaulambya of Chitipa commended the Ministry for the intervention saying it was important for the government to know the number of active farming households for projection, planning and budgeting.

“This system will ensure that active farmers benefit from what government provides in relation to agriculture through Agriculture Input Programme (AIP) among others. Some people who do not have farm land benefit from AIP and end up selling out the inputs, hence this system will identify eligible beneficiaries,” he said.