The Sunday Mail
The Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) has come up with a joint venture farming programme envisaged to put at least 50 000 hectares under production during the first phase of the initiative, starting with the 2022/2023 summer cropping season. The programme is expected to increase production and guarantee the country’s food self-sufficiency. The Sunday Mail’s Tanyaradzwa Rusike (TR) spoke to ARDA chief executive officer Mr Tinotenda Mhiko (TM) about the programme and a range of other issues.
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TR: Can you outline ARDA’s contribution to wheat production this season?
TM: ARDA established 14 018 hectares of wheat across the country this year versus 5 316 hectares in 2021, which is a 263 percent increase versus the prior year.
Around 86 percent of this wheat was established under communal irrigation schemes, which fall under our rural development arm.
We are targeting to produce at least 70 000 tonnes of wheat, which is about 20 percent contribution to the national wheat requirement.
Our aim is to ensure that the country is wheat self-sufficient, especially under the current volatile geo-political environment that has destabilised agricultural commodity markets and supply chains.
TR: Briefly explain ARDA’s plans for the forthcoming summer cropping season and how this will contribute to the attainment of national food self-sufficiency?
TM: ARDA intends to establish at least 50 000 hectares of cereals, fibre and oilseed crops this summer season at irrigation schemes, estates and through a joint venture arrangement with farmers who have irrigable land but have no access to working capital or have limited technical knowledge on cropping.
Our target for this coming summer season is to produce at least 300 000 tonnes split across food, feed and fibre crops by the end of the production season.
Our wholly-owned subsidiary, ARDA Seeds, is also scaling up seed multiplication of climate-smart varieties this summer as we remodel our seed house as a vehicle for seed security.
TR: You recently invited landowners to engage ARDA in joint ventures (JV) for enhanced production. Can you outline what this JV programme entails?
TM: The ARDA JV programme seeks to partner farmers who have land and irrigation infrastructure but are facing challenges accessing working capital or do not have the requisite technical crop production knowledge to fully optimise the capacities of their farms. ARDA will provide access to finance and provide tillage equipment plus crop-specific technical management skills to ensure productivity levels are optimised.
The focus of the programme is on ensuring that we maximise crop production to ensure food self-sufficiency and consequently import substitution for the country.
It is part of our rural transformation strategy which seeks to industrialise marginalised communities and promote employment creation, which dovetails with the Government’s devolution agenda and the subsequent attainment of an upper middle-income economy by 2030.
TR: Last year ARDA introduced the V30 Accelerator Management Model for irrigation schemes as a strategic tool for rural transformation. Can you give us a breakdown of how this model works and how it has helped increase production?
TM: The V30 Accelerator Model (short for Vision 2030) is basically an enhanced productivity model that focuses on imparting agri-business skills to scheme households to ensure irrigation schemes are self-sustaining and are run viably and profitably.
We are implementing this model across the 450 irrigation schemes in the country.
We successfully piloted the model at 42 irrigation schemes across eight provinces last year and scaled up replication of the model this year.
To date, 292 irrigation schemes have been on-boarded.
The model is strategic for rural transformation in the following ways:
- Employment creation for rural households and graduates from both universities and colleges. The model directly employs 900 people; that is, one resident scheme business manager and one resident bookkeeper for each irrigation scheme.
The model also creates direct employment for 70 000 local youths (one resident horticulture garden manager, one resident bookkeeper and at least one night watchman for each garden). Household beneficiaries are employees of the scheme during the season and are paid monthly wages. They are also shareholders of the scheme and are paid dividends upon harvesting and marketing of the produce. The objective is to transform these rural households from subsistence farming to surplus-oriented production.
- The model increases household income of the household beneficiaries and transforms these beneficiaries to businessmen and women. Production is done at the back of a profitable business case which entrenches viability within the schemes, which, in turn, transforms rural livelihoods through industrialisation and subsequently increasing their incomes sustainably.
- Increased productivity. Massive knowledge transfer happens as the household beneficiaries receive regular training to farm as a business and to adopt the best management practices, which then boosts production and productivity. Increased productivity then allows the households to achieve food self-sufficiency and then sell the surplus. This then drives the transformation from subsistence farming to surplus-oriented farming.
- The model is driving rural industrialisation. We are decentralising processing plants for irrigation schemes and horticulture gardens at district and ward levels respectively for value addition and beneficiation of produce cultivated at the irrigation schemes to cause rural industrialisation, which, in turn, will catalyse rural development. The processing and aggregation centres will allow for grading, consolidation to build economies for scale, dispatch and distribution to offtake markets. This intervention promotes growth in export earnings and improves rural GDPs, dovetailing into Government’s devolution agenda. Hence, the household beneficiaries are becoming economic participants instead of spectators in farming.
- Financial inclusion and bankability. By farming as a business, the household beneficiaries are now opening bank accounts to access working capital loans and receive their wages and dividends. This then allows the household beneficiaries to pay for utilities and working capital loans.
- The V30 Accelerator Model is also being replicated under the ARDA Dairy Development Programme across 23 milk collection points to ensure that they are self-sustaining, viable and profitable. It is also being implemented at village horticulture gardens where ARDA is also collaborating with various implementing agencies on the establishment of 35 000 one-hectare self-sustaining nutritional gardens under a whole-of-government approach to break silos and to allow for mutually beneficial synergies across our parent ministry sister parastatals. The gardens are powered by renewable energy to support horticulture development in the rural communities, at the back of a profitable business case.
TR: What other programmes are in the pipeline to boost production and engender rural industrialisation?
TM: ARDA is introducing decentralised value addition and processing of agricultural commodities produced at irrigation schemes.
The aim is to empower rural farmers by capacitating them in beneficiation of their produce so that they can achieve greater financial value.
We expect this to create lean value chains that will eventually create a more competitive processing industry that will help in stabilising commodity prices and reduce importation of basic commodities.
As alluded to earlier, this agriculture development causes rural industrialisation, which, in turn, catalyses rural development.
ARDA is also leveraging technology and big data to further boost productivity, income and profitability for the rural farmers.
We developed a digital USSD platform accessible on a feature phone for advisory and e-extension to improve our operational efficiencies and to also ensure that we make smart decisions from the data mining.
