Parliament yesterday passed Fertilizer Bill which establishes Malawi Fertilizer Regulatory Authority to regulate and also license fertilizer operators to ensure access to high quality fertilisers by farmers.
Speaking with reporters, Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale said that they want to make sure that the value chain is well regulated so that the end user should not be inconvenienced by having substandard fertilizer considering that the issue of fertilizer involves different players such as manufacturer, blenders and retailers among others.
“As government our role is to protect the smallholder farmers at all costs by making sure that there is no fertilizer that is being blended with illegal substances.
“The regulatory authority will make sure that they do the testing during production and also post production. This will make sure that what has been produced and is being used by the consumer has the minimum requirement so that we increase the production and we increase the revenue that farmers in the village are getting and at the same time we are looking at the benefits of fertilizer to the country because the country needs fore,” he explained.
On the issue of penalties, he said that the minimum penalty is K10 million and is there to punish people who will be involved in illegal production.
He added that anyone producing fertilizer for commercial purpose, even if the person is in the village, they will be regulated and if the person is meeting the requirements, then he or she will be licenced.
On his part, Chairperson for Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture Sameer Sulemani said that he is pleased with the arrangement of penalties because it will protect farmers from buying fake fertilizers.
“It is our hope that the passing of this bill will deal with fake fertilizers that is becoming word of the day. It is not right that someone sits at the house and take sand, paint it with lime and sell it to a farmer who has saved up that little money for so long waiting for the rains to come to buy that fertilizer but ends up buying sand. That is killing a Farmer,” he said.
Currently, the fertilizer industry is regulated by the Fertilizers, Farm Feeds and Remedies Act (Cap. 67:04) which was enacted in 1970. The Act is said to be outdated as it is not able to respond to contemporary challenges facing the fertilizer industry.
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