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Green Scheme
Vision
Green Scheme strives towards appropriate & equitable use of land, contributing towards food security, supporting sustainable growth of economy, maintaining & improving land capability, reduction of poverty and introducing commercial irrigation farming.
Mission
To create an enabling, commercially viable environment through effective public-private partnership, stimulate private investment in the irrigation sub-sector and settle small-scale commercial irrigation farmers.
Strategy
To attract and enable large scale viable commercial farming enterprises to establish entities in remote undeveloped rural areas to act as Service Provider for the successful and sustainable settlement of Small Scale Farmers.
Green Scheme
The Green Scheme policy of the government offers great potential to expand and increase production of food under irrigation. Agribank is already involved through the provision of production loans at Etunda, Orange River Irrigation Project (Orip), and Ndongalinena projects. The policy aims at establishing approximately 22,000 hectares under irrigation along the perennial rivers bordering Namibia. The construction of storage facilities in strategic regions will enable grain produced by small-scale farmers to be bought and stored in the silos for use during time of need. There is therefore a need to develop products stringent upon collateral conditions to access financing along this concept as long as there is a guaranteed buyer of produce.
The green scheme is designed to maximize irrigation opportunities along the maize triangle (Grootfontein, Tsumeb and Otavi) as well as in the north central and North Eastern regions using the Kunene, Kavango and Zambezi rivers as well as the promotion of agro projects in the South using orange and dams such as Naute and Hardap. This policy aims at harnessing the resources of government and other stakeholders in order to increase agriculture productivity and social development as envisaged in NDP III and Vision 2030 strategy.
With regards to the Green Scheme, a total amount of N$9.5 million was granted to Etunda Irrigation Scheme for both the service provider and the 86 small-scale farmers. The same financing arrangements will apply to Ndongalinena irrigation, Shadikongoro and Vungu-vungu projects with a total of 51 small-scale farmers who will receive a combined total loan of N$6.5 million.
The Etunda Irrigation Scheme
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.
Corporate Projects
Dairy Farm
In 2009, Agribank contributed N$26.4 million in a co-financing arrangement with the Development Bank of Namibia for the !Aimab Superfarm in Mariental with roughly 2,000 cows and is expected to double the current annual milk to 24 million litres to meet the growing local demand. It is the largest agro-industry in Namibia and is expected to create 120 direct permanent jobs and approximately 600 throughout the dairy industry.