Consider agri, businesswomen told
Female farmers must be encouraged to take agricultural farming seriously to help fight poverty and unemployment hindering rural communities.
Silas Nduvheni
LIMPOPO – Female farmers must be encouraged to take agricultural farming seriously to help fight poverty and unemployment hindering rural communities.
“It is time to get up and do things for yourself so that we can defeat poverty, unemployment and help create jobs for jobless people.
“I want to encourage our rural women to actively participate in agricultural farming to better the lives of their communities,” said Ms Annikie Malukuta, the overall winner of the Vhembe Female Entrepreneur Award.
Malukuta said nowadays emerging farmers have no reason not to start up farming, as government was assisting farmers with seedlings and tractors.
She was speaking on Thursday during the glittering ceremony of the Vhembe Female Entrepreneur of the Year Awards which was held in the Thohoyandou Indoor Sports Centre.
Malukuta who was awarded the overall Vhembe Female Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 also won a cash prize of R5 000 and was given a certificate of participation.
She grows tomatoes, butternut, and green beans among others on Nwanedi farms in her Feskraal I Unit 84 outside Musina.
Malukuta will represent the Vhembe female entrepreneurs during the provincial competition scheduled to be held on 20 August in Polokwane.
The Vhembe entrepreneurs were competing with each other in different categories such as best female worker, best subsistence farmer and top export producer.
Rodgers Tshivhase, acting Vhembe mayor, said the district was humbled to be associated with the progressive department of agriculture in efforts to fight poverty and encouraging women to take centre stage in the economic development of the Vhembe district.
“The Vhembe district municipality has a number of programmes aimed at helping and uplifting the emerging farmers and other enterprises.
“I urge women in our district to take an advantage of all these opportunity
“He strongly applaud the department of agriculture and its partners in implanting the initiatives of the female entrepreneurs awards since 1999 and said the good things about these awards is that it starts at the local municipality level and everybody is given an opportunity to participate and showcase their agricultural products.
