Around 800 families living around the Limpopo National Park, Massingir district, Gaza province, are receiving agricultural inputs and work tools. The initiative comes from ANAC and the Peace Parks Foundation and is part of a program worth around five billion euros.

In the so-called buffer zone of the Limpopo National Park, Massingir district, Gaza province, there are communities that, despite the severe drought, depend on agriculture and livestock to survive. However, these families often don't have the money to buy seeds.

"The conditions before were not like now. We used to sow corn, okra. We didn't know what tomatoes, cabbage or lettuce were," laments Oseleta Elias, a farmer from Massingir, quoted by the newspaper "The Country".

But the situation has changed, as producers now have a variety of agricultural inputs with the distribution that began last Wednesday. Each producer is given a voucher to buy the seeds and work tools they want.

Producers are happy with the supply of agricultural inputs and work tools, but they say that the elephants that repeatedly invade their fields are compromising production. "The elephants punish us. They punish us a lot. This is the big problem we producers have. We grow crops, but our harvest doesn't pay off. We can't even recover the investment we made because of the elephants," said another farmer.

(Photo DR)