daniel chigunwe
Obert Chifamba Agric Insight
THE GOVERNMENT recently issued a directive for A1 and A2 farmers to submit annual production reports by February 15 of every year in a move calculated to ensure maximum land utilisation and help identify underutilised farms for repossession and redistribution.
In essence, the move will separate those who acquired land for speculative reasons from the productive ones who are fully utilising their farms whether small or large.
The move comes as a monitoring tool for the Government to keep abreast with production trends on the land it gave out to over 300 000 families under A1 (commercial) and A2 (small-scale) models during the land reform programme implemented at the turn of the millennium.
At least 18 000 families got resettled as A2 farmers with 360 000 benefiting under the A1 model.
But owing to the colossal demand for land, at least 200 000 applicants still remained landless but in dire need of the resource.
These have been on the waiting list since then on the backdrop of ongoing efforts by Government to identify idle land to resettle them.
The annual production reports will serve as confirmation records of activities taking place on farms, for instance, in crop and animal husbandry, which will also reflect on what kind of assistance a farmer might need from service providers like Agritex.
In a way, the records will also be vital pointers to Agritex extension officers on areas that need improved extension services or how much farmers are utilising technical knowledge from their teachings.
But the important thing is that Government will use the reports as a way of managing the waiting list for those who are yet to get land after tendering their applications.
In the words of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister Dr Anxious Masuka, the Government will “repossess underutilised land and reallocate it to other farmers” guided by information contained in the reports.
Minister Masuka also emphasised that the Government had instructed beneficiaries of the land reform programme to submit mandatory production returns of the farming activities on their farms in a bid to maximise land utilisation and productivity.
He added that as the nation moved to industrialise rural areas through agriculture as envisioned in Vision 2030, it had become necessary to invoke the powers under the Agricultural Marketing Authority Act (Chapter 18.24) to cause A2 and A1 farmers to submit mandatory production returns on forms obtainable from the Ministry’s Monitoring and Evaluation Unit and website as well as the Ministry’s offices countrywide.
As a way of authenticating the reports farmers will be submitting, Agritex officers shall visit farms and compile separate verification reports.
The information gathered shall assist the Ministry to support Provincial Land Committees in carrying out the new policy guidance on land focusing on prioritisation for redistribution in categories of multiple land ownership, abandoned farms, derelict farms and underutilised farms.
Of course, there are those who always want to antagonise authority and do not comply with directives so Government has already clearly spelt out the repercussions of such actions — they will lose their farms since there will be no evidence of production on their farms in the national database.
Those who do not submit their reports will in fact be sending a clear message to Government that they are not doing anything and do not deserve to be on that piece of land, hence it should be given to those that need it for productive reasons.
On the one hand, those farmers who submit false information risk losing their offer letters.
Falsifying information is tantamount to sabotaging the entire exercise of land re-distribution and the pursuant close monitoring of production trends, which means that Government will not be able to identify areas that need attention while future planning will also be grossly compromised.
Farmers who fail to submit information essentially fall into the category of multiple land owners, abandoned farms, derelict farms and underutilised farms and, consequently, their farms maybe offered to the Provincial Land Committees for consideration for reallocation to deserving candidates on the waiting list.
Production reports will among other things help farmers to make important business decisions, do proper budgets and planning towards making their farms more productive.
It is no rocket science that in the absence of proper budgeting and planning, farmers will not be able to easily commercialise their operations because they cannot keep track of their investment expenses and returns.
This means that they will not be acting as professional business people who want to keep their loss and profit accounts at hand to guide their operations.
These production reports will also help Government make decisions on the farms to downsize although those less than 500 hectares will be spared.
Productive farms exceeding the maximum farm sizes for their respective agro-ecological regions shall be exempted from downsizing for now pending further guidance while the Ministry’s Monitoring and Evaluation unit will regularly visit farms for the verification of information contained in the submitted reports.
The Government has made it clear that it envisions transforming the 18 000 A2 farmers into agricultural entrepreneurs with the farms earmarked to be transformed into viable businesses by 2025.
The 360 000 A1 farmers are also set to groomed into viable and formal small to medium enterprises by the same year, which means all farming activities whether large or small-scale should be treated as business enterprises whose production records are compiled every season.
“Land has become a major economic enabler and agriculture has become a business. Land and agriculture, therefore, must cause accelerated economic activity for the attainment of Vision 2030. It is in this regard that the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development directs all A1 and A2 farmers to submit annual production and productivity forms by 15 February each year,” Minister Masuka emphasised recently.
It is also refreshing to note that Government is encouraging farmers who for one reason or another are not fully utilising their land to secure joint venture partnerships to increase utilisation and has since approved a Joint Venture Agreement Framework, which allows investors to undertake farming operations.
All joint ventures will be approved by the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development for them to be legally binding. A joint venture database, for the purpose of match-making available underutilised and unproductive land units with potential joint venture partners is also being developed.
Interested farmers can register with their nearest Agritex office while potential joint venture partners can register with the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the Ministry.
Online Reporter