Govt in irrigation drive
LIVINGSTONE MARUFU
Government has embarked on an aggressive drive to increase area under irrigation in an effort to lessen the impact of climate change, given the frequency of droughts over the past two years.
The nation possesses around 10,600 bodies of water that may be used for irrigation, but as of now, just 217, 000 hectares of land are being irrigated, which worries the administration.
The development was confirmed by Professor Obert Jiri, the permanent secretary of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development.
He said the Ministry will host the Zimbabwe Irrigation Conference tomorrow as part of efforts to unlock the country’s irrigation potential.
“We have more than 10, 600 water bodies which are able to irrigate two million hectares. (However), we are only irrigating 217 000 hectares only, which is 10% of what we must irrigate.
“We should critically think on whether to go hungry or not when it has such huge water bodies. We can produce 1.8m tonnes under 350 000 hectares under irrigation. We have a gap of around 250 000 which can be under cereal.We need to close that irrigation gap so that we can feed ourselves and be able to export.
“This is why we are calling everyone to say let’s put our heads together and unlock this 250 000 hectare gap so that we produce enough come climate change, come El Nino as we will be producing under irrigation,” Prof Jiri said.
Of the 217 000 hectares, around 46 000 hectares are under sugarcane and others are plantation crops.
This leaves the country with very limited land to irrigate hence there is a need to develop new irrigation schemes to ramp up production.
“We need investors who will come on board so that we can develop new irrigation schemes that will help us to increase the irrigable land to 350 000 hectares from the current 217 000 hectares. Banks are invited to come to the irrigation conference as the increased irrigation development to the required levels of 350 000 hectares will reduce the risk profile of their loan book by a huge margin given that they will fund something that they are guaranteed of getting a return,” Prof Jiri said.
He said the irrigation people will also unlock banks business in a big way as non performing loans will be a thing of the past, given harvest guarantees that irrigation provides.
The development partners, Prof Jiri said, will be excited as they suddenly will change from the provision of humanitarian support to development support.
“Everyone should come for this conference so that we must unlock the vast potential in Zimbabwe as a country. Our agriculture should be climate proofing through irrigation development.The production is limited to irrigable land that we have,” Prof Jiri said.
Government is worried that the country has a lot of water resources after South Africa but is failing to utilise it.
“After setting up 350 000 hectares for irrigation, the only thing that we need to do is to focus on productivity on how much we are producing per hectare. Any moment that we improve from five tonnes per hectare to anything, all that food will be in excess,” the Zimbabwe National Farmers Union executive member Stewart Mubonderi said.