Maize hectarage marginally increases

TENDAI BHEBE RECENTLY IN TSHOLOTSHO 

Maize hectarage marginally increased to 1,962million hectares this summer cropping season, up 3% from last year, a government official has confirmed, as Zimbabwe seeks to attain self-sufficiency.

Speaking on the sidelines of the master farmer graduation day in Tsholotsho over the weekend, chief director at the Agricultural and Rural Development advisory services directorate department in the Ministry of lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, Climate and Rural Development, Obert Jiri said the increased production in maize and small grain crops will help enhance food security and nutrition.

“So from the crop livestock and fisheries assessment that we concluded in the last two weeks, we realised that in terms of maize we had an increase of 3% from what we did last year. This season we are sitting on 1,962 million hectares of maize. The majority of that is in the Mashonaland provinces,” Jiri said.

He added: “ In terms of sorghum we are still counting we were sitting at 138 000 hectares of sorghum. In terms of pearl millet, we had a whopping 27% increase from last season.”

He said the government was expecting good yield.  There was huge expectation for a giant leap in yields, thanks to the government’s decision to avail inputs that match the climatic and soil requirements for each of the country’s various agro-ecological regions.

Jiri, however, said the uptake of small grains was very low among smallholder farmers in climate change affected districts of the country in spite of expert advice.

“And we pronounced that in most drier parts of the regions we must have traditional grains. And here we are seeing even when it didn’t rain properly we are seeing a very successful crop of sorghum, pearl millet and sunflower which were driven by the agro ecological marching mantra which we pronounced.”

Javis Dube, village head for Domboline Hololo village in ward 22 said: “We are grateful to the government and the president of the country (Emmerson Mnangagwa) for providing seeds for our small grains as our region receives less rain. More villagers have joined the master farmer training. We are slowly moving away from drought as we are farming these crops.”