Gov’t calls for intensive investment in agriculture amid warnings of looming hunger

JUBA – South Sudan government has called for intensive investment in the agriculture sector as 7.74 million people, 63 percent of the population, across the country, face a crisis.

The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) released on Saturday in South Sudan said that 7.74 million people are projected to be acutely food insecure across the country throughout the lean season between April and July.

The report said the most affected states are Jonglei, Unity, Upper Nile, Lakes, Eastern Equatoria (Kapoeta East), and Warrap.

More than 80 percent of the entire food-insecure population is from within these states.

Peter Mayen Majongdit, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management stressed the need to invest in the agriculture sector in a bid to boost food production to tackle acute hunger.

“We must invest all those resources that we have into the agriculture sector; it will boost the industry sector and agro-economy activities, empowered youth, create employment and reduce my job of humanitarian dependence,”   Majongdit said during the release of Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report on Saturday.

Majongdit said investing in agriculture can boost the industry and empower the economic efficiency in the country.

“Once we expert then we can get a foreign exchange of any kind. Invest your money or your resources, whatever you get from the mining or from the sector into the agriculture,” he said.

He stressed the need to encourage the youth to embark on agriculture.

“The agriculture sector creates various opportunities and those opportunities are basically empowered the local traders that they will have the opportunities and the jobs and they will be food secure,” he said.

He said the agricultural cooperative society should be empowered in order to assist farmers to increase food production.

“Through the Ministry of Agriculture, you would have created a very powerful economic growth and that is why even within this region of East Africa, agriculture is the most powerful thing,” he said.

“We must support women and youth agricultural activities at the lower level in Payams, and Bomas with irrigation programs.”