admin
Zimbabwe is likely to receive normal to below normal rainfall during the 2015/16 cropping season with farmers being advised to plant small grains and short season varieties. The Meteorological Services Department (MSD) said farmers should also stagger the planting in order to spread the risk.
The department said as part of measures to avert potentially devastating food insecurity, the government should prioritise cloud seeding. It said there is also need for those farmers with irrigation facilities to concentrate on cultivating crops under irrigation as opposed to dry-land farming.
The department said there was a high likelihood of late start to the rainy season across the country. “A short rainfall season (December to February) is expected across the country hence the need to plant small grains and short season varieties,” said MSD forecaster, Lucy Motsi.
Zimbabwean farmers should therefore brace for another drought year and all efforts should be directed at mitigating the effects.
Farmers who take farming seriously should have started land preparations so that they are able to plant with the first rains. The farmers should have by now mobilised all the required inputs such as seed and fertilizer.
A good farmer is one who is able to adequately prepare for the planting season. In some areas, it is an advantage to dry plant so that crops can benefit from the early rains. Zimbabwe used to be the Southern Africa region’s bread basket and it has the potential to regain this status once all those allocated land under the land reform programme fully utilise the land.
More than 300,000 families were allocated land under the fast track land reform programme meant to correct the settler regime’s skewed land ownership whereby the minority whites owned most of the productive land while the majority blacks were confined to barren land.
The resettlement programme is ongoing and the challenge to the government is to ensure all those that were allocated land are using it productively. There are many individuals who took land for speculative purposes and these should be identified and removed from the land so that it can be allocated to those committed to producing food not only for their consumption but the nation at large. We want as a nation to produce surplus for export as was the case in the past.
Zimbabwe’s economy is agro-based hence the need to ensure that the land is used productively. Suppliers of farming inputs on their part should ensure prices remain affordable to farmers.
We want to once again implore the government to take seriously the issue of cloud seeding and mobilisation of the required resources should start now.
Online Reporter