"We need to grow at least 6 percent, that's our fight. I know we're going to grow more than that, but the next campaign must have a minimum production of 6 percent", said António Francisco de Assis, this Monday, during a meeting with journalists where the results of the 2021/2022 agricultural campaign and the preparation of the 2023/2024 campaign were presented.
Angola has 35 million hectares of arable land, of which only 16 percent are being worked and only 2 percent of this area is irrigated, with family farming predominating, which represents 83 percent of production, while business participation is less than 6000 companies, indicated the national director of Forests, Domingos Nazaré.
Angola is currently self-sufficient in the production of cassava and sweet potatoes, bananas and pineapples, eggs and goat meat, with production growth of around 5.6 percent in all of the 2021/2022 agricultural campaign in all the rows (cereals, roots and tubers, legumes and oilseeds, fruits and vegetables).
Credit granted to the sector represented just 7 percent of the total granted by banks.
Domingos Nazaré highlighted the growth, in this period, of coffee cultivation, with a slight increase of 1 percent between 2021 and 2022, to 5206 tons, mainly due to the promotion of the 'arabica' variety, which, unlike the 'robusa' , allows mechanized agriculture to be used.
However, between 2017 and 2022, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Minagrif) consulted by Lusa, coffee production decreased by 18.4 percent.
Currently, the weight of agriculture in the Angolan economy, essentially supported by oil, is around 6 percent, but the minister in charge was optimistic about the next campaign.
"For the first time in this mandate, our sector will deserve particular attention. From our perspectives we think that the next campaign will be good", highlighted António Francisco Assis.
In the next campaign, the Government aims to assist more than 3 million families, using the type of crops, the areas of exploitation worked and the poverty of the soil as criteria for distributing production factors, he said.
