The Ministry of Agriculture, Marketing and Food Security in Lesotho Holds a Validation Workshop for Contract Farming Project

By Rethabile Nchee

The Department of Marketing (DOM) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS) held a two-day validation workshop for its contract farming (CF) project called “Building capacities and facilitating enabling environment for contract farming in Lesotho” TCP/LES/3801 (684382). The National Project Coordinator (NPC) gave a brief introduction of the project. This included its launch which was in June 2021, where the objective was to introduce the project in general, thereafter, facilitate formation of the working group and the project steering committee. In terms of the progress, the NPC indicated that an on-line training on legal aspects was undertaken where the audience included stakeholders in government and the private sector. The rational for this training was for those participants to play future roles in promoting, facilitating and implementing CF operations and for them to train other role players about this concept. District MAFS Personnel were also trained (physically) on the concept of CF, its operational and legal aspects.

 The objective of this two-day workshop was to validate this project. This was done through two major presentations of the Contract Farming Bill as well as the Value Chain Analysis & Feasibility Assessment for Contract Farming in Lesotho.

Advocate Kometsi presented the draft farming act which among others proposes a system for contract farming through a voluntary registry for contracts, recognizes rights and obligations for both parties, provides specific support to women empowerment, provides basis for contract enforcement and provides for alternative dispute resolution and remedies. There were also sections that talked about formation of the contract itself, registration of contract farming agreements, rights and obligations of both the farmer and the buyer, modification and termination of the contracts, remedies for breach of contract as well as dispute resolution.                                                                         

The second presentation was made by Dr. Rantlo as the agribusiness consultant. He mentioned that a scoping study was conducted on four value chains & feasibility assessment for contract farming in Lesotho where dry beans, potatoes, broiler chicken, and pigs were selected. These however were selected and agreed upon after a rigorous assessment and analysis of 7-8 value chains. He detailed the process that was undertaken to reach to these four commodities. This process included doing desktop research, data analysis and stakeholder consultations. Another objective of this workshop was for the different stakeholders to give their inputs on the selected value chain commodities which will then be put under piloting. The presentations for each of the four value chain commodities were centered around two areas as follows:

• Value chain analysis, which took into consideration market outlook, value chain mapping, stakeholder consultations and key findings
•  Contract farming feasibility assessment: Looked at opportunities and enabling environment for CF, advantages and incentives for CF, capacities for CF and concerns, risks and disincentives for CF.

The stakeholders concluded and recommended that the bean value chain be the one to be piloted first under contract farming. The reason for this was that beans do not require strict international standards like poultry and piggery value chains which at present most Basotho farmers are not able to meet as a prerequisite. 

The author is the Chief  Research Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and also a CCARDESA ICKM Focal Point person for Lesotho.