ANGOLA – To achieve food security, Angola needs eight hundred thousand tons of fertilizers annually to support agricultural activity, according to the director general of the Institute of Agrarian Development (IDA), Felismino da Costa.
The director, who was speaking to the press in Ndalatando, Kwanza Norte province, said that the country uses less than 50,000 tons of fertilizers in agriculture, which makes it difficult to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Feliciano da Costa said that despite the work of the Executive to leverage the input sector, national production is still insufficient for the leap that is intended to be made in agriculture in the country.
Because of this, he stressed, peasant families, who constitute the basis of agriculture, have difficulties in accessing agricultural inputs, not because of financial limitations, but because of the country’s inability to produce locally, a situation that inhibits the increase in national production.
However, recently, the Angolan agricultural sector celebrated a remarkable achievement, recording production of three million 187,951 tons of cereals, including maize, millet, rice, and wheat, during the 2021/2022 agricultural season.
The announcement was made by Domingos Veloso, the national director of Forestry, during a meeting between the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, António Francisco de Assis, and national and foreign journalists in Luanda.
According to the officials, this marked a notable growth of about 11.1% compared to the previous period.
Overall, national agricultural production experienced a significant growth of 5.6%, involving nearly two million households and 5,800 companies during the 2021/2022 agricultural season.
Family production constituted about 90% of the total, benefiting from nine thousand tons of seeds and 21 thousand various plants, with a particular emphasis on corn and rice seeds.
Regarding technical assistance to peasant families, the director informed that it is still limited, due to the lack of specialized technicians, which contributes to the use of rudimentary methods in agricultural production.
He said that the IDA has 317 extensionists, a number that he considered insufficient to assist about three million peasant families in the country.
According to Felismino da Costa, IDA has used technicians trained in the agronomy sector for the technical training of peasant families, revealing that a process of recruiting new technicians for the institution’s staff is underway.
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