The Sunday Mail
Basil Nyabadza
The Agricultural Rural Development Authority (Arda), through various public-private partnerships, is already in every rural province.
In all the eight rural provinces, we have activity. In some cases, (activity) is at three or four Arda estates in each province.
We carry out livestock farming, plantations, cereals, horticulture and wildlife.
We believe that economic devolution is the best way forward in attaining Vision 2030, which is meant to establish an upper middle-income economy in 12 years’ time.
As such, we have made significant headway on cereals at the moment. We had to start with cereals as a way of boosting food security.
Nutrition is our next target through producing oil seed (soya bean, groundnuts and sunflower).
We are also pre-occupied with establishing plantations, mainly of fruit trees.
We are talking about macadamia, pickens, lemons, oranges, mangoes and guavas because these are dedicated export lines.
In Esigodini district, Matabeleland South, the processing plant is almost complete. We believe in early 2019 it should be commissioned.
The plant will trigger production of guavas, mangoes, tomatoes and butternuts under an active out grower programme that is rural-based.
In Chipinge district, Manicaland, we are stepping up and revitalising production of macadamia nuts.
We are establishing a plantation of 700 hectares in Mutasa district at Katiyo Tea Estate and the partner is already on site as I speak.
That will lead to a processing factory for avocadoes for dedicated exports to Europe, precisely France, Italy and Britain.
Under the devolution programme, Arda is revisiting key projects such as milling, bakeries, abattoirs and milk production.
We believe each of the eight rural provinces should have a minimum of those four projects that I have just outlined.
Currently, we have a crazy, uneconomic situation, where bread is baked in Marondera and delivered in Bulawayo.
Essentially, the journey to Bulawayo and back is about 950 kilometres, which burns diesel that we don’t produce as a country.
We also have a situation where maize is grown in Karoi, transported to Harare for milling and then taken to Kariba for resale as maize-meal. I believe this is not viable.
And who bears the cost of such extensive travelling?
We can never be competitive in the circumstances.
So, as Arda, we have already established a milling plant in Matabeleland South (Matobo district) next to our Arda Antelope Estate to retain value within the district.
Jobs will be created in the district and we will export mealie-meal to Bulawayo; so we regard Bulawayo Metropolitan Province as a consumer base.
This is what we are doing as Arda under the devolution plan: to see that what we have inherited — the economic system inherited yesterday — is made relevant and we become competitive.
If you look at current production patterns, most products come from rural areas but are processed in urban areas and marketed back to rural areas.
We are saying no to that business model.
That is what Arda wants to address in the next five years.
We are also working on timelines of our value addition and beneficiation programme and we believe we will have a clear position 36 months from now.
We have to change our vocabulary and question why are we importing bread, why are we importing milk, why we are importing mealie-meal – that’s what we will be asking each Minister of State.
We have got to retain value through production and processing of those products in respective provinces.
Arda board chair Basil Nyabadza was speaking to The Sunday Mail reporter Norman Muchemwa last week.
