Agriculture contributes 3% to GDP

28 June, 2007 in Botswana

source: BOPA
27 June, 2007

GHANZI – Agriculture offers long-term sustainable opportunities than some sectors which the country currently depends on, says Debswana managing director, Mr Blackie Marole.

Officially opening Ghanzi District show, Mr Marole, said the contribution of Agriculture, which was originally the mainstay of the economy had dropped to about three per cent of the Gross Domestic Product due to growth in other sectors.

Mr Marole said the decline was also due to unpredictable weather conditions that made farming a risky and unreliable source of income.

Despite that, he said, people must not forget that agriculture still played an important part in the rural areas where most of the countrys population resided.

He said with modern technology and new farming methods much of its potential could still be harnessed to improve the lives in rural areas despite the constraints imposed by weather changes.

Mr Marole said Ghanzi District had been blessed with abundant land that could be used for ranching.

He said it was in this manner that in the new and evolving land tenure system Botswana could count on those people who had been allocated large scales of farmland to develop and manage into more productive lands.

Government had also made schemes to increase [continue reading]

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