Thank you Chairman.
I represent the Farmers? Major Group.
The recounting of achievements are very impressive, as also the highlights of the
regional Meetings.
The major concern of farmers are:
1. To be able to produce optimally from their resources including water, which is
incr3easingly becoming more and more precious, and
2. Reach the produce to the market and get fair returns.
I would like to take the second point first, viz reaching the produce to the market.
Transportation facilities continue to be inadequate and growing at a very slow pace.
Agricultural commodities perish at the farm level adding to the poverty of the farmers
and hunger of the population.
Roads, warehouses, transport facilities, scientific processing and storage are not
receiving as much attention as they should. We have no place to store and consumers
do not have supplies!
This needs very urgent consideration to achieve sustainable development.
As regards my first point on optimising production with scarce resources, particularly
water sources for a variety of reasons and rendering them unusable is really
unforgivable.
Could measures be put in place to speed up implementation of infrastructure projects
and reduce the huge gaps that plague development and arrest factors that cause grater
pollution and destruction of bio-diversity.
