Crop farmers should start embracing new farming methods in order to increase their yields.

This was the advice of a crop farmer in the Zambezi Region, Liswani Kambinda in an interview with Nampa, adding that times have changed and the old traditional way of ploughing needed to be revisited.

He said new farming methods such as conservation agriculture will enhance the yield and efficiently dodge unexpected droughts.

He added that conservational farming uses a ripper on the tractors, that no matter how little the rain will fall in the year, the water will be stored while crops will be kept wet and fresh for a long time.

The crop farmer who tills his 17 hectares of land every year, noted that: “Rain nowadays is not the same rain the farmers would receive back then, therefore it is important that the new good agriculture practices are encouraged.”

Kambinda says last year he got a bumper harvest of over 400 bags of maize, while this year he only managed to get 81 bags of 61 kilogrammes of maize due to low rainfall.

Ploughing earlier, using certified seeds and weeding on time, he said are some of the factors that contribute to a high yield of harvest and therefore advised his fellow farmers to always plough on time from mid to end of November and to the first week of December.

“With less rainfall received this year, drought is definitely hitting many and this is unfortunate, and I foresee an increase in prices of maize meal in stores,” he said.

He further advised those in the agricultural industry to keep abreast with climate change, saying with the frost being experienced in the month of July, crops and fruit trees are burning from the cold fronts.

He added that across the globe, other countries are experiencing floods and too much rainfall causing a loss of life and habitation for many.

Close to a hundred farmers in the Zambezi Region have lost their crops to early floods and drought this year, while many others harvested only 10 to 50 bags of maize.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency