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Obert Chifamba-Agri-Insight
WHEN President Mnangagwa said his administration was not going to leave anyone or any place behind in terms of development, some critics could have dismissed it as outright politicking.
But developments on the ground are now giving credence to the promise, with the agriculture sector being among the first to taste the operationalisation of that promise.
This comes in the wake of recent revelations by Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Dr John Basera that farm workers will this season be included in the Government’s Climate-Proofed Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme.
Dr Basera said this during a Presidential Winter Wheat Field Day held at Craigengower Farm in Mazowe District.
He said Government was going to provide farm workers with inputs in line with the country’s drive to achieve food security at all costs.
The move clearly demonstrates that Government appreciates the fact that farm workers are also family people who after the day’s toil on the land would still need to feed their families.
They also need to make the extra dollar from the sale of surplus produce.
Capacitating them to produce their own crops is a noble idea that ensures that not only farmers who employ them have access to food, while the same workers who are heavily involved in the production process have to buy it from the farmer or retail outlets.
Government’s Vision 2030 envisages a scenario in which citizens are food secure and are economically empowered to fit into an upper middle income economy.
This brings to the fore the power that farming has in economically empowering citizens, especially when they take it as a serious business that requires them to be calculating in everything they do.
Economic empowerment usually goes hand in hand with food security.
Food security not only brings significant benefits for human health, but forms the bedrock for the achievement of sustainable economic growth.
This makes it crucial to understand why Government is stressing on the need to achieve food security.
The food security strategy needs to be treated as an important matter requiring a sectorial approach in which various industries, for instance, finance, agriculture, health and nutrition, infrastructure and many others work together with the common goal of producing enough food for all.
It will not take rocket science for one to realise that in the absence of stable and long-lasting food security, there will be an unrelenting negative effect on human capital. This will obviously raise the Government’s fiscal costs, with negative results on its public spending.
Essentially, such a development will culminate into a stagnated economic growth in the long term, which makes food security crucial for both short- and long-term economic growth.
One of the major take-away points enshrined in the Government’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a strong push to find ways of ending shortages, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
Chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Maximo Torero (2014:3) postulates that without a country-owned and country-driven food security strategy, there will be obstacles and additional costs to global, regional and country level economic growth.
It is a truth universally accepted that countries with very high levels of poverty and chronic malnutrition face limitations in human capital development, which is required to achieve sustainable growth.
High levels of poverty, inequality, and chronic malnutrition force governments to invest significant resources in the short-term through social safety net programmes and conditional cash transfers.
High rates of malnutrition can lead to a loss in gross domestic product (GDP) of as much as four to five percent, according to the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The country’s target for this season is to achieve food security at all costs, hence the push not to leave anyone behind in the provision of inputs under the Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme.
Government is also placing a lot of emphasis on the need for farmers to follow or adhere to Pfumvudza/Intwasa principles such as digging holes, mulching, among other preparations, before they receive inputs.
This will not be a problem for farm workers given the fact that they are the ones who do the preparatory work all the time so instead of doing it on the boss’ farm, this time they will just be employing their skills on their own small pieces of land.
They will also just need to replicate the way they have employed agronomic instructions from extension officers on their land to come out with good results.
The Pfumvudza/Intwasa concept that is designed to climate-proof agriculture through its conservation farming techniques and application of correct agronomic practices for higher yields will certainly yield something positive for the farm workers.
The good thing this time around is that Government has re-modelled the inputs distribution model to allow farmers dotted across the country’s different agro-ecological regions to get inputs whose climatic and soil requirements match those of the areas in which they are situated.
This means that chances of their project going off rail are very slim.
They just need to employ the correct agronomic practices and their projects will succeed beyond doubt.
The 2022/23 summer programme’s strategic objective is to sustainably increase crop production and productivity to meet and surpass the national requirements for both human consumption and industrial use through the implementation of the key tenets of the Agriculture Recovery Plan.
Since inception, the Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme has assisted vulnerable smallholder farmers improve their livelihoods and perspectives on methods on agriculture by venturing into inter-cropping for nutrition.
Government has already released $20 billion towards the Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme to boost food security.
In the same, the idea of distributing inputs in line with the dictates of the country’s different agro-ecological regions is one way through which the Government has demonstrated its serious intentions to ensure all citizens in every corner of the country get food secure.
It is also from abundant yields that the country’s agro-based economy can get raw materials for processing, which creates employment opportunities, which will provide the country with a launch pad for the transition into an upper middle income economy by 2030.
Online Reporter