The Sunday Mail

Agriculture recovery in motion

Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement

ZINMBABWE is an agrarian economy and has huge potential to produce enough for its people and surplus that can be exported to generate foreign currency. However, there is a puzzling divergence between increasing food requirements as a result of population growth and observed inadequate food production and insufficient productivity. This is posing a significant threat on national food security and is imposing unnecessary pressure on the fiscus as the country’s food import requirements increases.

Such an untenable situation has necessitated the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Resettlement to develop the Agriculture Recovery Plan (2020 – 2023) to engender the envisaged agricultural transformation agenda aimed at six outcomes: food security, import substitution, diversified exports, value addition, employment, and improved incomes and standards of living of people. The Agriculture Recovery Plan is aligned to the First Five Year National Development Strategy (NDS1).

The Agriculture Recovery Plan was endorsed by Cabinet and launched by His Excellency, the President, Cde Dr E.D Mnangagwa in line with his Vision 2030 of empowering Zimbabwe and propelling all citizens into an upper middle-income status by 2030. The surest inclusive approach where no one is left behind can only be achieved through enhanced agricultural transformation. This will put the economy in good stead to usher stimulus into the rest of the economic sectors. The immediate target is to reverse the continued decline in food production more importantly in all agricultural value chains including the grains and oilseeds sector for household, national food and nutrition security. The best and smartest export is ‘not to import’ what you can competitively locally produce, hence the import substitution drive.

The Agriculture Recovery Plan is being implemented in a space where the Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation Strategy broadly spells out the roadmap of ensuring that the agriculture sector achieves over US$8.2 billion Gross Agriculture Production Value by 2023.

KEY STRATEGIC INTERVENTIONS AND PROGRESS

The Agriculture Recovery Plan is underpinned by the following key strategic interventions:

Diversification of food production and consumption will explore support for production of alternative foods such as cassava, sunflower, potatoes and sweet potatoes to reduce consumption from the staple crops (maize, wheat and soyabean).

The Pfumvudza programme adopted the principles of conservation agriculture to help the small holder community to adapt to climate change effects and variabilities, hence climate proofing the sub-sector.

His Excellency, the President Cde Dr E.D Mnangagwa supported Ministry’s extension capacitation with over 5 000 motorbikes. To date over 3 200 motorbikes have been delivered and distributed to Veterinary and Agritex extension officers in all the provinces. By end of April 2021, delivery and distribution of all the 5 000 motorbikes to all extension officers will be completed.

A total of 5 000 smart tablets were procured and 1 000 tablets have been distributed so far to agricultural extension officers. This capacitation is critical for the implementation of the Agriculture Information Management System and will enhance capacity building under the Zimbabwe Agric-hub extension training platform.

The Ministry is implementing the Accelerated National Irrigation Rehabilitation and Development Programme, Smallholder Irrigation Revitalization Programme (SIRP), More Food Programme Phase 2, Maka Resources Facility (Maka 20 & 80) and Pedstock Facility. This will result in an increase in the area under functional irrigation to at least 350,000 hectares by 2030.

The Ministry is aggressively exploring ways to revitalize all the smallholder irrigation schemes that commands a total of 26 000HA and will roll out market linked models to ensure sustainability.

The John Deere and Belarus facilities are being administered by participating banks such Stanbic, CBZ and Agribank. Further, a Special Agricultural Equipment Leasing Vehicle housed at Agribank was created to offer tillage, planting and combine harvesting services on a cost-recovery basis supported on a Stop Order Platform with off-takers.

KEY SUCCESS FACTORS

The following keys points are very crucial for the success of the Agriculture Recovery Plan.

  1. a) Adopting scientific methods (Conservation Agriculture) to climate proof Government Programs;
  2. b) Timely provision of inputs (fertilizers, seeds, agrochemicals and other key utilities);
  3. c) Soil conditioning (liming) to improve fertilizer/nutrient use efficiency;
  4. d) Availability of key utilities such as power and fuel to farmers;
  5. e) Crowding in the private and the financial services sectors;
  6. f) Meticulous vetting, onboarding, tracking and monitoring of Productivity Enhancing Programmes;
  7. g) Access to appropriate finance for inputs and working capital;
  8. h) Continuous support of the targeted farmers with irrigation and mechanization services to improve efficiencies and climate proofing, respectively;
  9. i) Capacitating the extension service delivery system so that it becomes responsive and provision of the same to farmers;
  10. j) Government-wide coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the entire facets of the Recovery Plan

It is important to note that most of the programmes are being private sector led and government enabled. If we get agriculture right, then we are on the right track to get everything else right. Agriculture is four times more powerful at reducing poverty and transforming rural communities than any other sector.

Sixty-seven (67) per cent of Zimbabweans resides in rural areas, hence, pro-poor inclusive development programmes are invaluable in laying the necessary foundation for Zimbabwe to achieve its commitments under the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) more importantly those the Ministry is directly and indirectly responsible for. There are SDG1 (No Poverty), SDG2 (Zero Hunger), SDG6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG13 (Climate Action), SDG14 (Life under water) and guided by SDG17 (Partnerships to achieve the Goals).

In light of the need to cooperate and collaborate for the achievement of SDGs, Government through the Ministry entered into partnerships with development partners to address some of the challenges imposed on us by climate change. The partnerships led to the rolling out of Small Irrigation Revitalisation Programme (SIRP), UNDP Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund, Green Climate Fund Project titled “Building Climate Resilience to Agriculture Livelihoods in Southern Zimbabwe”, Zimbabwe Agriculture Growth Programme among many. All these initiatives are meant to transform the sector in manner that builds capacity to withstand the vagaries of nature and more importantly focused on smallholder farmers (youth and women in particular) under the banner of leaving no one behind as pronounced and enunciated by His Excellency, the President Cde Dr E.D Mnangagwa in Vision 2030 as well as the Africa Agenda 2063.

Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement