adminMS Sibusisiwe Gulu is a communal farmer in Dundubali Village 2B, Ward 10 in Umguza District, Matabeleland North Province. She is a proud owner of a decent homestead gauging by rural standards.
And her life is not very far off the mark that divides the average rural rich and those that are rich. She falls in the average rural rich category though, for she can easily afford three meals a day, a feat that many even in urban areas are struggling to achieve.
She has more than 70 indigenous chickens that are commonly referred to as road runners from where she harvests a basketful of eggs on a daily basis for her family and for sale. She has a number of cattle and goats too that give her and her family more than adequate milk while the dung from the pens is fed into the biogas plant that feeds the home with electricity that fires up a television set, fridge, radio as well as lighting.
As if that is not enough she is into fish farming too and is a proud owner of a fish pond where she has put a considerable number of fingerlings that are not yet ready for the pot.
Her fridge is not always as empty as those of some homes in urban areas that are powered by grid electricity, for just a few meters from the kitchen in the yard is a garden where she is doing horticulture. Tomatoes, carrots, and a wide variety of leaf vegetables are grown. Hers is a complete homestead that many even in towns can easily envy.
And with this year’s rainfall, Ms Gulu is one woman that fate has highly favoured. She is one of the farmers who was identified and benefited from seed provided by National Tested Seeds where she planted three hectares and is expecting a bumper harvest from it as the crop grown under the supervision of agriculture experts has not disappointed. It has been quite bountiful.
“We have continued to champion development in the communities we are living in through agriculture. Our lives have improved greatly, thanks to interventions by both the Government and the private sectors that have continued to educate us on various projects for sustainable agriculture and poverty alleviation,” said Ms Gulu, on the sidelines of hosting a field day at her homestead.
She said she learnt a lot through workshops on projects as well as following closely on the advice given by Agritex officers and was happy to be one of the farmers leading the community by example. Guest of honour Mrs Nondumiso Nokuthula Ngwenya from the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development’s Livestock Department said Ms Gulu’s homestead was an epitome of communal agriculture success that resonates with the theme of enhancing food security and nutrition at household level for a health farmer.
She said the discourse of achieving food security should not be left to the arenas of national discussion but should start at the lowest levels through communal interventions that feed into the national whole.
Communal farmers, she said, were supposed to strive to ensure that their homes were food self-sufficient and avoid relying on donor aid for food hand-outs adding that such interventions were not sustainable.
“Stakeholders in both the public and private sector have however, been pulling in the same direction with the objective of making sure that adequate food is a human right and good nutrition is essential to achieve the aims of the Millennium Development Goals.
“This also comes after the Government realised that humanitarian assistance was an unsustainable means of attaining food security, health and nutrition for the poor given the short term nature of the intervention,” said Mrs Ngwenya.
She emphasised the need and value of nutritional gardens saying nutritional gardens have multiple benefits for communal households such as optimised health, reduced risk of diet-related chronic diseases and increased enjoyment of food among community members. She also said they offer a balanced diet through dietary change that complements the seasonal availability of foods produced and processed by the local food and agriculture system as well as improving access to an adequate, affordable and nutritious diet.
Mr Matthew Sibanda a manager with National Tested Seeds said as far as time could remember, agriculture had been the life giving artery of many communities in Africa’s developing countries. He said in Zimbabwe agriculture was an important sector that drives sustainable economic growth while reducing poverty levels in rural communities.
Agriculture, he says, has over the years provided the cushion for communal farmers’ food security concerns with surplus output sold and the money used for other things such as medical, sending children to school and other expenses particularly those that cannot be produced communally. He lauded the collaboration between seed houses, farmers and the Government in ensuring which seed was suitable for which area saying it was only through such spirit of togetherness that the vision of food security was going to be attainable.
“We are happy that our farmers are making headway with our seed varieties. We have all varieties of seed from maize to small grain that suits the climatic conditions of every farmer. The results of the work we are doing with Agritex officers are there for all to see and we hope we are going to see more uptake by the farmers of such programmes in future which are a demonstration of how serious we are in complementing Government efforts to ensure food self sufficiency at household and national level,” said Mr Sibanda.
He urged farmers to organise themselves into groups when purchasing their seeds so that they cut on transport costs as the seed would be delivered to them. In recent years however, erratic rainfall patterns presented serious challenges to food production and the situation has been worsened by climate change which has increased rainfall variability in many of the country’s communities making them semi-arid and arid.
These concerns have been shared globally and more substantially in Zimbabwe where the agricultural sector, the most important sector for poverty eradication and livelihood improvement, has been undermined by malnutrition and food shortages.
Despite a coterie of challenges that are climate and economic related, communal farmers in the country have remained resilient. They have continued to fight poverty and malnutrition within their communities through modern agricultural interventions and techniques that are imparted to them by experts in the private and public sectors.
Mr Sibanda said due to climate change they were now focusing on producing seed varieties that were drought resistant so as to cushion farmers against the grim effects of El Nino-induced droughts.
Agritex Officer Mr Kuda Nkomo urged farmers to follow the standard cropping strategy and proper spacing to maximise on yields and reduce weeding costs.
He said cotton and tobacco were suitable in parts of Matabeleland North such as Umguza District although most farmers were reluctant to plant it because of challenges in transportation as there was no depot close by.
He also talked on the importance of nutritional gardens in communal areas saying when people have access to an adequate food supply, they were not exposed to illness and could achieve their full potential in terms of development.
“Collaboration among health, agriculture and education sectors is particularly important in capacity building. Without progress in addressing nutrition related issues, developmental goals will not be realised. I urge our farmers to take heed to the advice that we give them and follow proper cropping procedures,” he said.
Interventions by the Government and Non-Governmental Organisations and other private players came after it became clear that short-term humanitarian responses needed to be reinforced with longer-term programmes to meet the needs of the most vulnerable subsistence farmers, particularly in areas of high HIV prevalence.
Online Reporter