Tanzania to produce 300,000 tons of fertilizers #tanzania

Tanzania is expecting to produce 300,000
tons of fertilizers annually to mitigate the threats of food
security and hunger.
Recently small holder farmers were trained in the best uses
of Yara Mila fertilizers from Norway to improve their
production capacity. Three years ago, President Jakaya
Kikwete officially launched the Yara depot in Dar es
Salaam.
Speaking to the East African Business Week during the gala
dinner party organized by Yara Tanzania to their
distributors recently, Yara Tanzania, Managing Director, Pal
Qystein Stormorken said in ensuring that the agricultural
activities grows in Tanzania farmers must be given proper
and timing training for them.
He said availability of fertilizers in the field in is a priority.
"But we have to train them to ensure that they meet the
market demand and improve the production capacity across
the country. The firm is looking to construct factories apart
from Dar es Salaam, we are going to construct a factory in
Morogoro, Tabora, Kilimanjaro, Moshi, Arusha, Mbeya,
Kigoma and Katavi in order to get closer to farmers," he
said.
He said the company has branches for distributing
fertilizers in Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Congo and Malawi
with the aim of expanding the network in Africa.
Stormorken said agriculture already uses 70% of the earth's
fresh water while the global sales of fertilizers are estimated
to 25 million tons a year.
He said currently Tanzania fertilizer production is 250,000
tons per year but through Yara Tanzania they expect to
produce 300,000 tons per year to tackle the problem of food
security in Tanzania and Africa.
The Head of Marketing and Distribution, Hilary Pato said
training to smallholder's farmers is inevitable due to the
fact that their agricultural activities are mostly out of
fashion.
"We want to make sure that we change the agriculture
status in Tanzania by increasing the availability of quality
fertilizers and seeds to small farmers," he said.
Pato said the company is committed to provide the
agricultural implements for small-scale farmers to foster
agricultural productivity and fuel social and economy
development as well tackling unemployment rate.
"The majority of Tanzanians think that strategically
agriculture (through grants and projects from outside) has
helped to increase the yield of their crops, but we at Yara
want to train farmers so that they can depend on agriculture
for their livelihood,' he said.
Pato added that agriculture is a source of income for many
households is an important pillar of the Tanzanian
economy, but amazing farmers continue to face the
challenge of reliable market for their products.