Input Subsidy

The National Agricultural Marketing Board (NAMBoard) is a government of Eswatini business enterprise under the Ministry of Agriculture established through an act of parliament referred to as the NAMBoard Act No. 13 of 1985. Its core mandate is to regulate the importation and exportation of scheduled agricultural products as well as to facilitate the development and production of scheduled produce in the country. The mandate is further entrenched in NAMBoard’s vision “To promote a financially sustainable farming community that contributes significantly to food security and to the economy of Eswatini”.

The horticulture sector is full of small-scale vegetable farmers with most of them farming on areas less than 1 hectare. The costs of production make it expensive to produce on medium to large areas. During the past two years, the area under production has decreased even further with the advent of Covid-19, compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
These calamities have resulted in a significant increase in farming input prices, reduced production areas, and completely abandoning production. Some farmers have resorted to reducing the recommended input quantities but still apply in the same size of production area. This has resulted to a drastic decline in yields.
NAMBoard after being mandated by the Minister as an aftermath of the innovation platform titled “Resilience Through Scarcity and Costly Farming Inputs” has established a revolving loan and horticulture subsidy facility for specific mostly imported vegetables. With these kinds of support extended to local farmers, we anticipate witnessing a surge in the volume of produce hitting the market and of course substituting imports.