The Sunday Mail
Community projects in Gokwe have helped families live sustainably. — Pictures by Kudakwashe Hunda
The food security situation in the country remains precarious, mainly as a result of the erratic rainfall that the country has been receiving in previous cropping seasons.
As a result, most perennially productive agricultural regions in the country did not produce enough to take the country into the next harvesting season, leaving some parts of the country in dire need of food aid.
A sizeable farming population in the country recorded almost low percentages in productivity, with several provinces not reaching half of their optimal potential.
According to figures obtained from the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union, the overall maize yield per hectare last farming season was 0,85 tonnes per hectare as per Agritex figures.
The country produced 786 000 tonnes and 1,4 million tonnes of maize in the 2013 and 2014 cropping season respectively, which is still short of the 1,8 million tonnes needed for national requirements.
Government had targeted more than two million tonnes of maize this season, but the Agriculture Ministry has already written off close to 300 000 tonnes, as a result of the obtaining bad weather.
Community projects in Gokwe have helped families live sustainably. — Pictures by Kudakwashe Hunda
What exacerbates the food security situation is the delay in releasing the national crop assessment report by the Ministry of Agriculture and Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, with experts in the agriculture industry insisting the document (food assessment report) helps the country to plan for other mitigatory measures way before disaster strikes.
It is in the context of ensuring sustainability in food security that the Midlands Province has launched its own ambitious $5,6 million four-year livelihood and food security programme, which among other things, is expected to improve food security through agricultural sustainable programmes for people living in the province.
This pilot programme, which has already been rolled out in some parts of the vast province, has already started registering envisaged results.
Food sustainability and poverty reduction are among some of the envisaged priorities that underpin the country’s economic blue print, ZimAsset.
Provincial Affairs Minister for the Midlands Province, Cde Jason Machaya, said the four-year programme is aimed at tackling various constraints that hinders small-holder farmers from increasing agricultural productivity.
“The initiative is all about how families in the respective districts of the province can implement some tenets of the economic blueprint (Zim-Asset) especially in the food security clusters starting from family level,” he said.
“We want rural families to learn to beneficiate anything at their disposal, whether its cattle fattening business or livestock rearing initiatives for future livelihood sustainability.”
“In some areas which need perennial food assistance due to their known not-so-friendly agriculture climate, areas such Mberengwa and Zvishavane, the idea is to increase funding in the production of quick to harvest small grains such as millet, sorghum and rapoko which do not require much rainfall.”
Hon Machaya said this will ensure that they have fall back plans every agricultural season, hence the initiative in their circumstance will be focusing on increasing productivity of the small grains in those areas.
He said Gokwe South, Shurugwi and some parts of rural Kwekwe have already been identified to spearhead the initiative in the province.
On the issue of funding, Hon Machaya said they had identified various means such as getting some funding from the balance of payment of the eight Community Share Ownership Trust Funds, although currently they were having problems of payment with other six CSOTs with only two of the community share trusts of Zvishavane and Tongogara Trust in Shurugwi forthcoming.
“We have also entered into partnerships with various friends of the province in the donor communities such as United Kingdom’s Department of International Development (DFID), MedDRA and many other partners and stakeholders,” he said.
With the initiative seemingly receiving acclaim from most parts of the province, community elders have zeroed in to offer support to the project which they view as a panacea to the food security situation in the province.
Chief Njelele applauded the envisaged initiative saying it will go a long way in ensuring the stability of the food situation in the Midlands region.
“The Gokwe area is prone to food inadequacy due to its, hot and humid climate, which do not favour agricultural productivity of food crops,” he said.
However, he said this did not mean that his realm had to resort to sending a food aid “SOS” every year, which makes the envisaged initiative sweet music to most of the farmers.
“Hence, the sustainable programmes happening in my realm such as fish farming, pig and chicken-rearing are going a long way in ensuring that most of the families would never go hungry because of the continued inflows of income accrued from these projects,” he said.
“What is needed now is to ensure that these farmers are educated on undertaking diverse farming programmes, unlike in past instances where they all focused on specialising in a single crop production, which impacted negatively on the pricing regime when they transacted their produce on the markets,” he said.
Farmers in the Ngondoma area under Chief Njelele said they appreciate the initiative which has the obvious results of improving their livelihood and also ensuring that they improve on their technical know-how on various aspects of farming.
“These programmes have ensured that we also acquire various technical aspects of farming such as pig, chicken-rearing and fish farming among other high value technical farming methods,” said Mrs Mary Mupisi, a communal farmer.
Another farmer who is a member of Vimbanayi Co-operative which has since established itself in the chicken layers production business and is situated within seven kilometres of Gokwe centre, Mr Uniform Vurandi, said they produce between five to seven crates of eggs per day, which means they are able to feed their families from the proceeds they get from selling eggs at the growth point.
“We sell the eggs at $5 per dozen, which means enough cash for the nine members who are in our co-operative,’ he said.
He said it is like every day is a pay day as they share the profits, whilst maintaining the working capital, which they received from a non-governmental organisation MedDRA, which is complimenting Government efforts in the province.
He said they partake the co-operative business whilst at the same time maintaining their farming business, which he described as like “gunning for two birds with one stone.”
