Minister of Agriculture, Sam Kawale, has vowed to continue investing heavily in cotton production by among others, providing affordable seeds to farmers.

He made the sentiments at Makoka Agricultural Research Station in Zomba on Wednesday where he visited different departments to appreciate the operations of the facility.

Kawale said the ministry is making sure that the entire value chain is supported and will continue to fund the research component as the industry is expected to produce 50,000 metric tonnes of cotton this farming season.

He emphasized on the need to resuscitate the seed cleaning equipment at Makoka Agricultural Research Station so that farmers can have high quality seeds for maximum returns.

“We are revamping some of the research stations in the country to make sure that they have necessary equipment and facilities to enable the research part of cotton production,” Kawale said.

“Over the past couple of years, production of cotton has been on the decline due to several reasons, but we are happy that last year our farmers managed to produce more following the availability of hybrid seeds which are a result of extensive research on seeds varieties.

“The Ministry also facilitated the sale of the product to off-takers who bought all the available cotton and this year they want more,” Kawale said.

The minister also visited Chikasa-Maganga cooperative which is into daily farming under the Agriculture Commercialization AGCOM project in Traditional Authority Mlumbe in the district.

Chairperson for the cooperative, Nelson Luwemba, said with support from AGCOM, they have managed to construct a daily processing facility and procure storage machinery with a capacity of about 500 thousand litres of milk.

He added that once the facility is in full operation, they desire to venture into value addition by producing other milk products like Yoghurt.

AGCOM is a Malawi government flagship project worth K600 billion that is focusing on transitioning farmers from subsistence to commercial farming.