BY PHUMELELE GAMEDZE (INTERN)
MBABANE– As many Eswatini horticulture farmers continue watching hard-earned crops sell at painfully low prices due to market flooding, NAMBoard is pushing mandatory EHIS registration as the practical solution to identify who is producing what, where, when and in what quantities, so supply can be controlled, imports regulated and farmer incomes protected.
For years, small and commercial growers alike have often planted blindly, relying on seasonal assumptions, word of mouth and hope that buyers would be available when harvesting time arrives. But this has repeatedly left many farmers stranded with perishable produce, little bargaining power and collapsing commodity prices when too much of the same crop enters the market at once.
It is this painful cycle of oversupply and poor returns that the National Agricultural Marketing Board (NAMBoard) now wants to break through the Eswatini Horticulture Information System (EHIS), a digital registration and production monitoring platform that became mandatory for all horticulture farmers on May 1.
According to information published on NAMBoard’s Market View Eswatini platforms, EHIS was established to capture and make available reliable national horticulture production and market information in real time, allowing regulators, farmers, buyers and policymakers to work from the same data instead of speculation.
At the heart of the registration campaign is a simple but costly reality confronting many farmers: when everyone produces the same commodity at the same time without market signals, the market dictates lower prices and the farmer carries the loss.
NAMBoard says credible farmer records now make it possible to move the sector away from guesswork into planned production.
Through EHIS, each farmer is expected to register personal details, farm location, crops planted, expected production volumes and estimated harvesting periods. This information then builds a national production map showing what commodities are coming into the market and when they will become available.
Such visibility, NAMBoard says, allows the regulator to detect possible oversupply before it happens and advise farmers accordingly, while also directing buyers to areas where produce will be available.
For a cabbage farmer who has in the past harvested only to find dozens of other growers releasing the same crop, forcing prices to drop overnight, this system could mean the difference between profit and loss.
NAMBoard maintains that registration is therefore not just a compliance exercise, but a market survival tool.
The board further states that once farmers are properly visible in the national system, it becomes easier to stabilise supply across the year by avoiding seasonal gluts and shortages, thereby helping maintain more predictable commodity prices.This does not only benefit farmers.
Buyers, retailers, aggregators and traders also gain access to verified information showing where produce can be sourced locally, the quantities expected and the timing of availability. This reduces panic sourcing and random import dependence while creating a more coordinated domestic value chain.
One of the strongest implications of the EHIS database lies in NAMBoard’s import regulation role.
Under its statutory mandate, the board is responsible for regulating imports and exports of scheduled agricultural commodities. However, such decisions can only be defended when there is sufficient evidence that local produce is indeed available.
NAMBoard says if farmers remain outside the EHIS system, they effectively remain invisible when import restriction decisions are made because the board has no verifiable records proving adequate local supply.
In practical terms, this means an importer seeking authority to bring vegetables into the country can only be restricted if NAMBoard can show, through registered farmer data, that local producers already have enough stock in the ground or nearing harvest.
Without those records, imported produce continues entering the market, often competing directly with local farmers who then struggle to sell.
NAMBoard has also indicated that future local sourcing enforcement will increasingly rely on this registered farmer database, where importers may be required to first demonstrate that they attempted to source from locally registered producers before permits are granted.
For farmers who register, this creates stronger visibility in formal sourcing channels and potential access to structured buyers.
For those who do not, the risk is exclusion from an increasingly data driven agricultural marketplace.
The board has intensified nationwide awareness roadshows and farmer workshops to help producers understand the registration process, with more than 3,648 farmers already captured in the system as of mid April.
Behind the policy language and digital forms, however, lies a very human story that of farmers who invest in seed, fertiliser, labour and water only to watch profits disappear because the market was never coordinated.
NAMBoard’s message is that registration may now be the first line of defence between the farmer and another season of harvesting without reward.
#NAMBoard #EHISRegistration #EswatiniFarmers #MarketStability
