By: Hilma Tuukondjele
Agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein says the Etunda green scheme is back in needing investors after an investor who planted white asparagus pulled out.
Schlettwein said this during a Monday meeting with governors, councillors, and traditional authorities of Kavango east and west regions in Rundu. The meeting follows a request by the regional leadership on the status of the green schemes in the two regions.
He said that the green schemes under Agribusdev collapsed except for Etunda irrigation.
“Etunda was only carried through because of an investor who planted white asparagus, but they pulled out because they had financial problems, so Etunda is now back to a situation where it needs new investors,” he said.
In 2019, The asparagus processing factory was inaugurated following Namibia’s agreement with the Spanish company Industrias Alimentarias de Navarra in 2017.
The asparagus-processing factory was constructed at Oshifo near Ruacana in the Omusati Region. The Asparagus Agro-Processing Project processed the asparagus produced from the Etunda irrigation project by the same investors.
In 2020, the project at Etunda produced 20 tonnes of processed asparagus, which were also exported.
At that time, it was reported that about 150 hectares had been prepared for growing asparagus, although 240 hectares were earmarked for the vegetable.
The farm employed 17 permanent staff and more than 400 casuals during the peak seasons.
On the other hand, he expressed that the wrong decision led to Namibian green schemes hardly harvesting two tonnes of crops.
“Some of our green schemes hardly got two tonnes. Two tonnes is a bad harvest for rainfed fields. And that is because decisions were taken wrongly and too late and delayed, so we realised very quickly after we consulted the region and traditional authorities that Agribusdev is not the right model to manage farms,” said Schlettwein.
He said after the regional leaderships were consulted on the matter of who to manage the farms, the ministry took it to the cabinet to revet the management of the projects back to the ministry and withdraw Agribusdev.
Agribusdev is a state company which manages government green schemes. In June 2021, its acting managing director, Berfine Antindi, announced that the entity would be dissolved and no jobs would be lost.
“Take it back to agriculture and revert to the old green scheme policy. That is a policy where we still outsource, using private sector people to run the farms, operate them on the farms, and supervise them,” he said.
He added that the cabinet agreed that green schemes should be outsourced and supervised by agriculture and the regions to see that the provisions subject to which the private entity is allowed to farm on the piece of land adhere.
Schlettwein said there should be a discussion of the conditions subject to outsourced green schemes.
“The quotations that give effect to the agreement that we have with the traditional authorities that we must make sure that locals benefit. Those conditions are the ones we need to agree on, not who runs the farm. It’s those conditions, nothing else,” he stressed.
He also said the leadership and the ministry should decide how the outsourced would be done.
“Is it through the governor’s, through the councillors, is it through traditional authorities, is it a special committee that we create to do that?” he questioned.
According to Schlettwein, irrigation should get a total yield when one plants a base of ten tonnes a hectare, adding that ten metric tons per hectare is an achievable yield.
“Musese and Mashare irrigation green schemes are the only two that survived the outsourcing. Mashare did survive; they performed well; Musese, the original private entity, is in liquidation, and they didn’t survive, but there was a sub-lease agreement that we managed to put in place.”