No free lunch for farmers: Basera

LIVINGSTONE MARUFU

 

Government has told the farmers that there will be no free inputs as the growers should apply to the financial institutions for funding to finance their farming business, Business Times can reveal.

At the breakfast programme, The Ignition, on ZiFM radio station yesterday, The Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary John Basera said the government will only help the vulnerable groups under the Presidential Inputs Support Scheme.

“Let me hasten to say that there is no free lunch for A1 and A2 farmers as they have to go through banks and get facilities for irrigation development which are supported by the government of Zimbabwe,” Basera said.

“We have command agriculture which is now remodelled where we have roped in banks which are lending the farmers. We used to 100% fund the command but now we have divorced ourselves we now only target vulnerable groups.

“This means that the A1 and A2 farmers will look for funding on their own,” he said.

Basera said the government will facilitate farmers to get the loans to banks so that they can ramp up production.

This comes as climate change remains one of the threats to the government’s US$8.2bn agriculture economy by 2025 as it continues to affect the yields due to mid-season droughts, false starts to the seasons and early abrupt ending of the farming seasons.

Basera said the government is carrying out a number of schemes to ensure the 2025 targets are achieved and irrigation schemes and conservative agriculture are solutions to that climate change threat.

“Climate change is affecting household food self-sufficiency and national food self-sufficiency.

“We are also rolling out an accelerated irrigation rehabilitation and development programme which we believe is the panacea in our quest and   thrust to adapt to climate change.

“These programmes will ultimately climate proof the agriculture sector which is still vulnerable to climate change.

“We have the 10 key programmes where we are targeting 200 hectares per district per year out of the 50 to 60 agricultural districts in Zimbabwe,” Basera said.

“We will also target the provinces in light of devolution where we will leave place and no one behind.

“This is mainly targeting the small holder farmers where we will be rehabilitating and resuscitating irrigations.

“We have 450 irrigation schemes in Zimbabwe amounting to the tune of 26 000 hectares and by 2020 less than 50% were functional,” he said.

Another irrigation programme, the government is courting the banks to do the irrigation schemes with A2 and large scale farmers in irrigation development and resuscitation programme where AFC is a huge player there.

AFC is carrying out a Pedstock Centre Pivots Irrigation facility where it is targeting 10 000 hectares and so far 8000 hectares were achieved in three years.

Besides irrigation facilities, Zimbabwe has adopted the Pfumvudza programme countrywide which means a new season of increased productivity and the new season of adoption of tenants of conservative agriculture.

This involves digging up of holes which will conserve moisture and we have four principles of Pfumvudza where there is a minimum soil disturbance by holing up at the space where a farmer wants to put the seed to attain minimum soil disturbance where we maintain good soil structure and the organic in the soil.

It also involves mulching which creates a moisture bank that keeps the crops green during the mid-dry season spells.

Basera said crop rotation aspect is another important principle and the doing of all the principles properly and on time.

According to the government, holing up should be between June and August with lime and mulching done before the onset of the season.

He said in the 2020/2021 summer cropping season, the Pfumvudza programme performed beyond expectations and was an instant hit.

“After doing what was needed by the conservative agriculture we broke a number of records in the country and in Southern Africa. We enrolled 2.2m farmers where they utilised and maximised small pieces of land to get high yields.

“The farmers who started Pfumvudza managed to attain 5.28 tonnes of maize per hectare at a time when the national average yields were at around 0.5 tonnes per hectare.

“The  conservative farming catapulted the  national average to around 1.4 tonnes which was incredible with year on year maize production increasing to 2.7m tonnes in 2020 from 907 000 tonnes in 2019 which was over 200% increase,” Basera said.

Zimbabwe has a national cereal requirement of 2 267 599 metric tonnes (mt) with 1 817 599mt for human consumption and 350 000mt for livestock.

 

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