Ms Melrose who was addressing a joint press conference with Sir Simon Fraser, visiting British Permanent Under-Secretary and Head of Diplomatic Service,, said her government is considering supporting initiatives like the ones of Kilombero Plantation with grants.
“Under Kilombero Plantation, small scale farmers are benefiting directly from the investment as they have increased their rice yields,” Ms Melrose said, as Sir Fraser maintained that London and the G8 through a new alliance for food security will assist countries like Tanzania to use available technologies to improve farming.
Kilombero Plantation Limited is a private company, a subsidiary of British Agrica Tanzania Limited running 5,000 hectares of rice fields in Kilombero district, Morogoro region.
Under a United Nations programme, Africa Training and Management Services (AMSCO) project, Kilombero was picked as one of the beneficiaries.
In 2009, AMSCO seconded the first manager to Kilombero, Murray Dempsey as the crop production manager. In the same year, Stanley Ngugi was seconded in the position of postharvest manager. Under the project, key undertakings included the development of 5,000ha of rice fields, construction of cleaning, drying, milling, and storage facilities to handle high production volumes with employment of over 400 people directly.
After the project’s interventions, the company cultivated, over 4000 ha of rice in 2011, and acquired cleaning and drying facilities with the capacity of handling 2,000 tonnes of rice and established a hydro electric power plant providing sufficient power for office and residential use, the project updated report stated.
This project has enabled hundreds of thousands of farmers acquire hybrid seeds, modern crop husbandry practices, access reliable markets for their crops and avoid post harvest diseases.
“Most of our rice is sold to traders while a small percentage is sold through traders in the wholesale market at Tandika in Dar,” said Carter Coleman, Chief Executive Officer at Kilombero recently.
Mr Coleman further noted that this is the first year that the company is buying rice from smallholder the farmers and the price is good compared to what middlemen offer during harvesting.
Under the UNDP project in collaboration with International Crop Research Center for Semi Arid Tropics, demonstration plots for system of rice intensification have been established with technology, smallholder yields have increased their earnings.
“We are no longer subsistence farmers but rather middle income semi commercial farmers with access to technology and reliable markets,” said Said Sundi, a rice grower in Kilombero who has benefited from the initiative. A father of eight Sundi has struggled to feed his relatively large family and ensure that his five sons and three daughters stay in school.
He is one of the over 4,000 outgrower farmers whose earnings have hovered between five and eight digit figures over the last three years. With production of over 4,000 tonnes of rice per annum from 3,000 tonnes in 2009/10 season, Kilombero is now the leading rice producer in East Africa.
“The project has been critical in the development of Kilombero by helping to source expertise that is not available in East Africa, particularly in the areas of large-scale mechanised farming and post-harvest processing.
It helps to reduce the additional risk and high-cost environment by identifying excellent managers and reducing the cost to employ them through the long development phase of a new project,’’ said Carter Coleman who is CEO of Agrica Tanzania Limited the parent company of Kilombero.
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