GoSS minister for Agriculture and Forestry said that South Sudan has plans to boost farmers’ production in order to provide enough food for its population.
Samson Kwaje was speaking yesterday during the launching of Food, Agribusiness and Rural Markets programme yesterday in Juba.Dr. Kwaje said South Sudan has a big potential for agriculture and the ministry wants farmers to pass from subsistence to a commercial agriculture in order to increase food production.
During the ceremony, an official from the ministry presented a very grim assessment of food security in South Sudan.
Lack of enough rain together with insecurity reduced drastically the areas of planting and at the end of 2009 there was a deficit of 225 thousand metric tons of food production.
The Government spent 70 million pounds to import 90 thousand tons of sorghum to be distributed in Jonglei, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Warrap and Eastern Equatoria states, the areas that suffer most from food shortage.