Minister of Agriculture, Mahmoud Elyes Hamza called for the need to follow the health protocol issued by the agricultural scientific research to fight against the date palm mite in the southern oases, which consists in cleaning the farms and then spreading in time the use of insecticides appropriate to this disease and monitoring its spread in the oases.
During a working visit to the governorate of Tozeur, Hamza stressed in a statement to TAP, that nearly 70 tonnes of sulphur have been made available to farmers concerned, which must be used before the appearance of the insect, saying that other treatments will be distributed in the productive governorates, with the imperative to pay attention to the appearance of this insect even before its spread.
The minister said that the date palm mite has contributed to reducing the quality of Tunisian dates during the last two seasons, causing problems at the marketing level already affected by the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to him, the visit he made to a number of oases in the region and contacts with producers and agricultural groups, allowed him to detect the difficulties and failures that the sector is experiencing in the region such as the scarcity of irrigation water, the increase in salinity in a number of boreholes in addition to the problem of increasing indebtedness for a number of hydraulic groups and the grouping of producers in professional structures.
Regarding the marketing of products, the Minister called on farmers to organise themselves within structures and coordinate with industrialists and exporters in order to create a complementary sector in the date sector which takes the form of a partnership contract guaranteeing the rights of different actors.
The Minister of Agriculture took note of the progress of a number of projects in the delegations of Nefta, Tozeur, Dguech and Hezoua, particularly the project of equipping five deep wells in Chabbat, Hezoua, Tozeur and Hammet Djerid, whose cost amounts to 483.721 thousand dinars.
In El Hammet Djerid, he inquired about the experience of the region in the field of early crops, through a visit to a number of undergrowths and the progress of the development programme of geothermal crops which still suffers from difficulties including the limited size of social projects, the salinity of irrigation water and the lack of agricultural structures to supervise and support the farmer.
