In a bid to enhance communities livelihood, the Ministry of Agriculture,
Food Security and Nutrition, under Maqhaka Resource Centre has
rolled out a four days training for farmers on bee keeping and fruits
trees management. This was revealed by Maqhaka Resource Centre
Area Technical Officer (ATO) Nutrition, Ms. Mahlompho Sheane during
an interview with the Agency on Tuesday, whereby 24 participants are
in attendance of the training. Ms. Sheane said the bee keeping is one of
the economically viable projects, but it is overlooked by the people,

therefore they saw a significance of training farmers about the
importance of bees and how they can earn a living by starting their own
projects.
She further said regardless of their size, bees play an essential role in
various aspects of life such as socially, environmentally and
economically such as being the great pollinators, they are easy to rear
and they constitute in income generation. Maqhaka ATO Nutrition said
for the fact that bees are the great pollinators, she emphasized the
importance of including the fruits tree management training so as to
encourage farmers to consider the establishment of up to standard
orchards.
She stressed that most farmers have orchards in their back yard, but
surprisingly they always complain about poor quality of fruits,
therefore among their areas of focus is to equip them with skills on
how prune them, how and when to spray for pests, proper way of
picking some fruits.
Additionally, Ms. Sheane said they have included the element of food
preservation in the training, citing that after both bees produce honey,
while trees produce fruits, farmers need to add value to their products
by preserving them for future use or packing them for the market. She
said through this initiative, they want to see farmers venture into
businesses and becoming the major supplier of processed foods.
ATO Maqhaka said having empowered such farmers with the skills,
their future plans is to engage other stakeholders like colleagues from
the Marketing department with the aim to train them on records
keeping skills and how to market their products in order to reach the
intended clients.

The training is attended by people around Maqhaka Resource Centre
and they are comprised of 12 women, eight men, four youths made of
both two boys and girls respectively.