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The Etunda irrigation farm is located at Ruacana, approximately 150 km west of Oshakati, in the Omusati region. The farm is about 600hactres in size, which is split in half for both commercial and small scale farming. Maize is the main crop on the commercial plot (300ha), where various agricultural cereal crops such as wheat, potatoes, cabbage, onion, melons and bananas are cultivated seasonally throughout the year by small-scale farmers. The farm workforce comprises of a total of 126 workers of which 45 are males and 81 are females.
This irrigation scheme has about 82 small scale farmers, of which each has a field of about 3 ha for irrigation. However, there are 6 small scale farmers who were given about 6 ha, who were selected based on their level of production and because of the way they maintain and manage their crops. This serves as an encouragement to them and a motivation to other small scale farmers. The small-scale farmers are growing maize, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, butter nuts, ground nuts, sweet potatoes and water melons.
The Agricultural Bank of Namibia provide loans of about N$3 million to these small-scale farmers in 2008 whereby they are using a voucher system. The loan is from the Ministry of Agriculture, water and Forestry and Agribank is administering it.
Agribank invest N$ 7 million dollars for production loans to both the small-scale farmers and the service provider. This created 100 permanent jobs & 500 seasonal jobs per season.