Chronicle Editor
Uzile Mkwananzi, Sunday News Reporter
THE Government has reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring that the nation sustains the national food security status, with continued efforts being made to access the Government-facilitated Social Welfare Grain Support to vulnerable households.
As the Second Republic forges towards Vision 2030 of leaving no one and no place behind, it has made progressive and undertaken practical interventions for food security, while several pre-qualification aspects to reduce future household food insecurity have been set up.
In June 2020, the Government introduced Pfumvudza/Intwasa, a sustainable intensive conservation agriculture model, to curb drought induced by climate change in rural communities.
In a joint statement on Thursday, the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Dr Anxious Masuka and Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Cde July Moyo said while the model has managed to improve food security, other households remained food insecure as they failed to embrace the model.
“The Crops, Livestock and Fisheries Assessment Reports of 2021, 2022 and 2023 have amply demonstrated progressive yield increases and higher household food production countrywide. These have been corroborated by the ZIMVAC reports of those years indicating a rapid reduction in the percentage of rural households that are food-insecure.
“The remaining food insecure households have largely been in the drier agro-ecological regions four and five. The majority of the food-insecure households have not fully embraced the Pfvumvudza/ Intwasa tenets of timely holing out, timely organic matter placement and liming, timely mulching, and timeous undertaking of best management practices,” reads the statement.
They said it has become necessary to link, with immediate effect, access to Government and Government-facilitated Social Welfare Grain Support to vulnerable households to several pre-qualification aspects to reduce future household food insecurity.
In this regard, the ministers said the introduction of grain access pre-qualification aspects require that the family/household commits to undertaking progressive measures to reduce future food insecurity, by completing the designated form to enrol for a Supplementary Pfvumvudza/Intwasa Master-class administered by Agritex.
“The recipient family/household must have done the minimum three Pfvumvudza/Intwasa plots to access grain.
“The family commits to a monitoring schedule administered by Agritex and that the village heads must assist vulnerable households (child-headed and elderly) to undertake the above aspects. A register for such households shall be produced and updated by Agritex and the Department of Social Welfare annually.”
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Bongani Ndlovu