Cited in Tuesday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", Fernando Songane, the director of the National Agricultural Development Programme (PROAGRI), said the Ministry is working on a strategic plan that includes biofuels.
"We have to organise to respond to this demand because that's the current nature of the market we find ourselves in", he declared.
"It's part of the core functions of the Ministry, in that we must have the capacity to respond to new demands".
Songane said the Ministry was fully aware of the need to find a means of co-existence between food production and the production of biofuels. But in essence the problem was no different from that posed by other cash crops - Songane noted that the production of cotton by peasant farmers in Nampula, or of sugar cane by peasants in Xinavane in Maputo province, did not mean that these farmers stopped growing food.
"We must be prepared to capitalise on the capacity of our small producers", he said. "More than 90 per cent of food production is in the hands of small producers. Based on experiences such as sugar cane in Xinavane, we have to see how the small producers can be involved (in biofuels), because they have to produce wealth for our economic independence".
But Songane warned that people must not be forced off their land to make way for biofuels. "We must not allow the usurpation of peasant land for biofuels", he declared.
He guaranteed that the Ministry would not allow any expropriation of peasant fields or pastures by those who want to grow biofuels.
But some biofuel projects could have a damaging effect on food production because of their use of water. This is the main problem with a project called PROCANA in the Limpopo valley.
Drawing on water from the Massingir dam on the Elephants river, the main tributary of the Limpopo, this project aims to irrigate 30,000 hectares of sugar cane to produce ethanol.
This could lead to less water reaching farmers growing maize, rice and vegetables on the lower reaches of the Limpopo, who had assumed that they would be the ones to benefit from the recent rehabilitation of the dam.
SOURCE: AIM
