Farmers to receive summer farming inputs by August

Michael Magoronga, Midlands Correspondent
THE Government has put in place measures to ensure that farmers receive farming inputs for the 2020/21 summer farming season by end of August to avoid unnecessary delays in planting.

This was said by the Deputy Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement, Peter Vangelis Haritatos in an interview on the sidelines of the official launch of the winter wheat farming season in the Midlands by Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga at Lozani Farm in Kwekwe on Friday. Deputy Minister Haritatos said the Government has prioritised the early distribution of inputs to avoid delays.

“We started the preparations in March as you know the process is not done overnight. I am optimistic that this coming season farmers should get their inputs early as we have planned that by August the inputs should be on the ground and distributed to provinces. As Government we have discovered that the delays in the distribution of inputs have been hampering progress in the farming sector and we have made the early distribution our number one priority,” he said.

Meanwhile, in his speech during the function, Deputy Minister Haritatos said the Government introduced the Agricultural Recovery Plan (ARP) after it recognised the key role of irrigation development as a key drought mitigation measure in arid and semi-arid regions.

“Irrigation acts as a mitigating measure against droughts and mid-season dry spells, which enables farmers to grow crops throughout the year and intensify production. Government is committed to provide an enabling environment to ensure a quick recovery of the irrigation schemes and the ministry has come up with an Agricultural Recovery Plan (ARP) which focuses on reversing the declining production trends of wheat, soya beans and maize,” he said.

ARP seeks to take advantage of abundant water bodies to climate proof the agriculture sector, known as climate smart agriculture. The existing water bodies have a potential to irrigate over two million hectares of which only 216 000 hectares are equipped with irrigation infrastructure and only 174 500 hectares are functional.

“For every large water body, the desire is to develop all the available land to within reasonable reach of the water to optimise the benefits from such public infrastructure investments. Government’s objective for irrigation development is to guarantee food security through increased crop production,” he said.

Deputy Minister Haritatos said the Government was continuing to address the challenges faced by smallholder farmers to ensure that the nation once again becomes food and nutrition secure and self-sufficient.