Online Reporter
Zvamaida Murwira
Senior Reporter
CABINET has set up an inter-ministerial committee to explore new technologies on cloud seeding that will augment areas that might fail to get adequate rainfall as the country begins preparations for the 2025-2026 summer cropping season.
This comes as agronomists have implored farmers to grow short-term varieties given that the Meteorological Services Department has forecast good rains that would be preceded by late onset.
This was said by Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister Dr Anxious Masuka while responding to questions from the media at a post-Cabinet media briefing.
“Regarding cloud seeding, perhaps the preamble of that is to say, Government through the Minister of Environment, Climate and Wildlife, the weather forecast, which was adopted by Cabinet I think last week or so, and that weather forecast is very positive,” said Minister Masuka.
“It says the season is similar to last year, although there will be an erratic start to the rainy season with reduced rainfall in October increasing into November, and by December, we’ll have normal to above normal rainfall patterns throughout the country, and we expect the season to last till March. So we’ll have a growing period of somewhere between 90 and 120 days.”
He said the advice that came from the agronomists is that there was need to plant short term crops.
“The agronomic advice based on that meteorological focus is that we need to do short season crops and be able to do agroecological tailoring, but we realise the importance of augmenting this with cloud seeding, and cloud seeding can determine failure or success of a particular crop, especially in the case of maize. It is in that context that Cabinet, in its wisdom, formed an inter-ministerial committee which I chair on cloud seeding,” he said.
Minister Masuka said the Government is exploring how to improve cloud seeding in three respects.
“First, we want to investigate newer technologies for cloud seeding, and then we are investigating the actual operational modalities, and thirdly, we are also looking at resourcing the cloud seeding, and the committee will be meeting later this week to try and go through the submissions by the working party and be able to recommend to the Cabinet appropriately, but we do realise the utility of cloud seeding in enhancing rainfall and ensuring that we have a successful season, but this must be part of a collective of measures that we implement for the summer season,” he said.
Preparations for the summer cropping season have commenced with the Government targeting to plant 3,1 million hectares of land.
The mobilisation of inputs has also commenced, with most of them being delivered to various Grain Marketing Board deports across the country.
