THE Tanzania Sunflower Processors Association (TASUPA) has highlighted strategies aimed to curb shortage of cooking oil challenges, hence relieving the country from the burden of spending a lot to import of the edible oil.

According to TASUPA, the measures include encouraging mass sunflower production in large farms to ensure that factories are fed with enough seeds to produce cooking oil.

Ringo Iringo, TASUPA chairman said this here yesterday when speaking to journalists about the association’s strategies to curtail edible oil challenges in the country.

According to him, one of the strategies is to collaborate with the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) where the Ministry of Agriculture and the council will arrange and encourage investment in large and medium-sized commercial farms that will produce more sunflowers.

“We also relying on the government’s plans to invest and strengthen the irrigation infrastructure to be completed on time so that some can be used to irrigate large farms that are earmarked for sunflower production,” Iringo said.

He said that in collaboration with development stakeholders who are interested in the sunflower sub-sector, they will stimulate and build the capacity of more than two million small-holder farmers to cultivate sunflowers in a modern way.

“The private sector in collaborative with the government will take initiative research on the availability of high-oil seeds and their use for farmers and in collaboration with  Tanzania Beekeeping Development Organization (TABEDO), we will encourage beekeeping around sunflower fields to facilitate pollination of sunflowers and increase yield and income for farmers,” he stated.

Iringo added that many farmers in the country have given up due to lack of a market for sunflowers as there is a large amount of imported oil, making them cultivate a small amount of the crop.

“The country will not have a major shortage of cooking oil because we are starting to cultivate sunflowers in large fields when the autumn season starts in early September this year,” Iringo emphasised.

He also said investment in large and small commercial farms continues in various strategic regions under the government’s plan to develop strategic crops.

“The existing projects under the TIC collectively with the ministry of Agriculture Building a Better Tomorrow- Youth Initiatives for Agribusiness (BBT–YIA) and Tanzania Agricultural Inputs and Support Project (TAISP) to facilitate increase in opportunities to produce sunflowers and jobs creation, we expect in the next three years, Tanzania will be producing more than five million tonnes of sunflowers,” he noted.

 However, he said that the situation will make it possible to process 900,000 cubic meters per year, thus making it possible to feed the country's needs and sell the surplus to foreign countries.