The government and development partners met last week to deliberate on how to accelerate growth.Within the last five years, poverty has gone down 12 per cent following various programmes, most notable agriculture related initiatives.While the country is now food secure, there is still a lot more to be done in the agriculture sector, which employs close to 90 per cent of the population.One of the main challenges is the use of modern technology in agriculture as well as encouraging the youth to consider agriculture as a viable employment opportunity.There is also need to address the funding shortages. Access to credit is key to boosting agriculture. Modern equipment such as tractors and irrigation tools are too costly for the average farmer to afford, yet extremely important for farming. Unless there are mechanisms in place to access credit with low interest rates, it will remain complicated for farmers to go for mechanization.Programmes such as land consolidation and formation of cooperatives have already made remarkable impact and it is time to build on this. The capacity of cooperatives should be strengthened so that they are in position to access loans so that they can add value to their produce thus giving them better returns.The opportunities in agriculture are immense and with additional investment they can be exploited.
