First round of crop, livestock assessment begins

GOVERNMENT has started rolling out the first round of the crop, livestock and fisheries assessment, which among other things, will determine the country’s nutrition and food security status and avail early information on the season’s progress concerning the national food security targets.

Crop and livestock assessment is one of the early warning methods to forecast the national food security status. It gives a snapshot of the performance of the sector and the different specific sub-sectors of the agricultural economy.

In addition, the Government is looking to verify areas planted for different crops in the season at national and different sub-national levels, as it is an early warning indicator of production prospects.

The Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development is implementing the programme that started on Monday last week.

Agricultural extension officers are the principal enumerators who will collect data from randomly sampled farmers in every ward of the 1 600 rural wards.

The country experienced a late start to the summer cropping season due to the delays in the rainy season as Zimbabwe and the southern African countries experienced El Nino weather conditions.

Most communal farmers depend on rain-fed agriculture and started planting in December last year.

The country received good rains until mid-January with meteorologists predicting a dry-spell which is expected to end by today.

In an interview yesterday, Agricultural Rural Development and Advisory Service (ARDAS) Matabeleland North provincial director Mr Dumisani Nyoni said the nationwide crop assessment programme started last week. “We have started the national crop, livestock and fisheries assessment programme. This is a national programme which we started on Monday last week. Data collection should be over by the end of the day today, then we move to data cleaning and analysis,” he said.

“The exercise is called crop, livestock and fisheries assessment. Nationally, the data collection is now over 90 percent complete.”

Mr Nyoni said in Matabeleland North they were 98 percent complete with data collection and the field officers are wrapping up the exercise.

“Our field officers are feeding information to our server and we are downloading it for analysis now. In assessment, we would be looking at the state of the crop and also its quality,” he said.

Mr Nyoni while they are still gathering information on the state of the crops, there is now a need for more rains to take the crop to maturity stage.

“Most of our crop is at the vegetative stage. We still need rains to see us through to ensure that the crop is matured,” he said.

ARDAS Matabeleland South provincial director Mrs Shupikai Sibanda also confirmed that the exercise was ongoing in the province and referred this reporter to the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Professor Obert Jiri.

Prof Jiri referred the Chronicle to ARDAS Mashonaland East provincial director Mr Leonard Munamati, who said the ministry expects to have completed the first round of the assessment within the next two weeks.

He said the ministry expects to have delivered the crop, livestock and fisheries report to Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister Dr Anxious Masuka by February 10.

“As of today at 4pm, the data collection was 93 percent and by tomorrow hopefully we will be done. We hope to have produced and delivered the final draft of the first assessment report to the Minister on February 10,” he said.

“This assessment programme enables us to conduct a verification exercise of the area of planted crops and the estimated production estimates. We can also verify the various crops that were planted, the grazing land for livestock as well as establish the effects of pests affecting the crops if there are any.”

Mr Munamati said the exercise is important for the Government’s planning initiatives and ensuring that mitigation measures can be implemented where necessary. – @nqotshili