peter
Senior Business Reporter
FARMERS in Bubi district, Matabeleland North province, have achieved a major breakthrough in establishing a seed bank, which is set to assist the community in preserving high value traditional seed varieties.
The Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund (ZRBF) and the Matabeleland Enhanced Livelihoods, Agriculture and Nutrition Adaptation (MELANA), assisted the community in making the project a success.
A seed bank is a special building usually with flood, bomb and radiation proof vaults used to store seeds to preserve genetic diversity.
Communal farmers in the district are now able to preserve high value and traditional seed varieties such as finger millet, sorghum, millet and quinoa.
Government has been encouraging farmers in dry regions such as Matabeleland to grow traditional grains as a way of mitigating the effects of drought.
The establishment of the seed bank also means that farmers in the district no longer travel to Bulawayo to buy seed.
Some of the farmers who spoke to Business Chronicle during a recent media tour of the ZRBF-MELANA project sites in Bubi commended the seed bank project.
Mr Colbert Mbambo who is also a village head in Village 19 and 20A said farmers were now able to preserve seed for future use.
“For a long time, we have been losing our seed during the dry season because we did not have a seed bank. Some of the seeds that we store here include maize, groundnuts and small grains,” he said.
Mr Mbambo said farmers in the district were this year planting cotton for the first time.
Mrs Khethiwe Ndlovu of village 5 in Ward 3 said the seed bank has helped them gain new farming knowledge that is helping to improve output.
“This facility has helped us to recover some of our traditional seed varieties that were facing extinction.
We were given the seed varieties through the programme being implemented by ZRBF-MELANA,” she said.
Mrs Ndlovu they have been taught how to prepare the seed before storage.
“In the past we used to store our seeds in granaries but they were exposed to rodents and insects,” she said.
Another farmer, Mrs Sifezile Sibanda of Ward 4 in Majiji village echoed similar sentiments hailing the ZRBF-MELNA programme for transforming livelihoods.
“This programme has also taught us to plant using the ‘gatshompo’ (climate proof concept) because our area does not receive much rain. This has helped to improve yields,” she said.
ZRBF-MELANA are implementing a number of projects in Matabeleland region meant to improve resilience to effects of climate change.
MELANA and Sizimele are a consortium of civil organisations that have partnered ZRBF in implementing projects that include livestock development, borehole drilling, growing of drought resistant crops and income generating projects.
The projects are being implemented in Bubi, Matobo, Insiza and Umguza districts with the support of the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, the European Union, the Swedish Government and the United Nations Development Programme.
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