adminOver the years the Zanu-PF Government was working hard to help the new farmers become productive and boost our economy, which is agriculture-based. First the Zanu-PF Government provided seed and fertiliser to the farmers in the form of loans.
The farmers would pay back the loans when they deliver their grain to the Grain Marketing Board. Later, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe took the initiative to assist new farmers get the required machinery and equipment for use on their farms.
This was successfully done under the Farm Mechanisation Programme where thousands of farmers received tractors, disc harrows, generators, planters, combine harvesters among other farm implements. The implements were also provided under a loan scheme. Even A1 farmers and communal farmers who work on smaller pieces of plots were also assisted with ox-drawn ploughs, scotch carts, animal-drawn planters and harrows as well as knapsack sprayers. The A1 farmers and communal farmers got the implements under a loan scheme as well.
The Zanu-PF Government also came up with 99-year bankable leases and several thousands of new farmers got the leases. However, despite all these efforts by the Zanu-PF Government, farmers continue to face problems to access capital to grow both cash and food crops.
The Zanu-PF Government managed to do all this despite being weighed down by the illegal economic sanctions imposed on the country by Britain and its European Union allies, the United States, Australia and their western allies.
And as we pointed out above our farmers continue to struggle to go back to their plots whenever a farming season approaches. Wheat production has gone down drastically to the extent that we now rely mostly on imports, which is not safe for a country thriving to be self-sufficient when it comes to issues of food security.
These were the Herculean problems that farmers were facing under the Zanu-PF Government until the inclusive Government came into being in 2009.
The plight of farmers has gotten worse with the birth of the inclusive Government as Treasury has been allocating inadequate funding for agriculture since 2009.
It is against this background that we welcome reports that Cabinet is expected, before the end of this week, to discuss a new revised bankable 99-year lease. According to the Zanu-PF Central Committee report released at the party’s 13th Annual People’s Conference at the Gweru Convention Centre, Government has for some time been working on a more bankable 99-year lease after it emerged that the existing one cannot be used to support applications for the much-needed loans from financial institutions
The Central Committee report rightly points out that the challenge is to ensure the 99-year lease is bankable but at the same time making sure it is not used by financial institutions to reverse the land reform programme.
We applaud the seriousness with which Zanu-PF views the land reform programme and the attendant issue of making our farmers productive. The same Central Committee report says more than $2 billion is required annually to revive the agricultural sector, which Treasury is reluctant to bankroll.
It is not a hidden secret that inadequate funding is severely crippling efforts to revive the agricultural sector. The decision to revise the 99-year leases with a view to making them more bankable should help unlock financial resources needed to spur our agricultural sector and indeed the economy as a whole.
We urge Cabinet to move with haste in coming up with the revised bankable 99-year lease because agriculture is the backbone of our economy.
Online Reporter