Swaziland growers looking for new crops
Dlamini, one of the business Directors said their collaboration with the board was solely aimed at enhancing vegetable production based on market demand. He said this will address the challenge which local farmers were faced with of producing vegetable varieties not needed by the market.
NAMBoard Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Siphephiso Dlamini once mentioned that the problem faced by Swazi farmers was that they were still growing ancient vegetable varieties which the market does not need. Farmers cried foul over this saying NAMBoard was not living to its mandate of providing market to farmers.
This came after the board could not buy the vegetable varieties they had grown. “We grow vegetable seedlings that are in demand in markets. We do so after consulting with NAMBoard on what are the different vegetable varieties the market needs. This is aimed at making sure we supply our customers with the right seedlings,” Dlamini said.
Other than producing vegetable seedlings, Dlamini said they also specialise in fruit trees propagating and also supply different customers including agro-dealers and individual farmers. Fruit tree seedlings produced at the nursery include mango, avocados, peaches and oranges to mention a few.
With an investment of over E3 million, Dlamini said they have since established a subsidiary company called GLM which is in line of business is landscaping. For now, he said about four people have been employed. The employment of the four people has increased the total company employees to 23. When using the country’s dependency ratio of 1:7, about 161 people are able to put food on the table.
Source: Times of Swaziland