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POVERTY levels are on a declining mode in Zimbabwe as more households are involved in productive activities and are consuming their own produce, especially in rural areas, study findings have shown.
This comes at a time when the country’s agricultural sector is on a transformative drive backed by improved Government support and the bumper harvest achieved last year.
The positive agriculture sector performance further buttresses the Government call for food self-sufficiency.
According to recent findings by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), food insecurity dropped from a high of 72 percent in 2020 to 36 percent last year.
In 2021, the county witnessed its best farming season in years as it recorded a bumper harvest of maize and small grains owing to good rains and improved access to inputs, which guaranteed food security.
Presenting the Sixth Round Rapid Poverty, Income, Consumption and Expenditure Survey (PICES) 2021 Report last week, ZimStat, director general, Mr Taguma Mahonde said: “There was marked decline in food poverty in round six as households consumed own output of maize, cooking oil and chicken, especially in rural areas.
“Food insecurity fell from 72 percent in 2020 to 39 percent in 2021. Extreme Poverty rate declined from 49 percent in September 2020 to 43 percent in September 2021.”
The Rapid PICES Monitoring Telephone Survey was jointly funded by the Zimbabwe Reconstruction Fund (Zimref) and Unicef, and implemented by ZimStat with technical support from the World Bank and Unicef.
The Rapid PICES project was first embarked on in June 2020, and so far six rounds have been completed.
The objective of the Rapid PICES survey is to assess the social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and inform mitigation measures.
It entails gathering household knowledge, perspectives, and behavioural responses to Covid-19, household access to food, medicine, water, education and Government assistance, economic impacts on wage workers, family business, farming and non-labour income.
Currently, ZimStat is analysing seventh-round data while preparing to start the eighth-round survey.
The mini PICES survey covered 210 enumeration areas and 3 000 households, which were drawn from the PICES 2017 survey households.
ZimStat, together with the World Bank and Unicef, designed a high-frequency telephone survey of households to measure the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 on households in Zimbabwe.
After consecutive years of drought and food insufficiency, 2021 saw farmers producing more than what is required for national consumption.
The good rainfall and Government support to farmers saw maize production increase by 199 percent from 907 628 tonnes produced in the 2019/2020 season to 2 717 171 tonnes.
The maize yield for the 2020/2021 season is the highest yield in 20 years because of the good rains and efficient farming programmes introduced by the Government.
In 2020, the Government launched the Agriculture and Food Systems Strategy as an integral part of the national development agenda being driven by President Mnangagwa.
It is a strong component of the National Development Strategy 1, which envisioned the attainment of a US$8,2 billion agricultural industry by 2025, but this was achieved within a year in 2021.
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