MTP to rejuvenate agriculture

Medium Term Plan.
The thrust of the policy is to create a self-sufficient and food surplus economy and restoration of the country as the breadbasket of Southern Africa.

The policy targets, according to the MTP, include attaining national food security by 2012, making the Agricultural Research and Development Agency estates fully operational by 2012 and completing the land audit by 2012.

Crop and animal production took a downward trend during the recent past and the country has failed to meet national requirements leading to imports.
For instance, maize production came down from a peak of 2 057 000 tonnes in 1996 to 1 451 629t in 2011 against national requirements of 1 800 000 tonnes.

Focus will therefore be placed on achieving food security by raising production of maize, wheat, soyabean, sorghum, sunflower and groundnuts. This would entail measures to increase crop yields per hectare.
Government will also seek to ensure increased production in small drought-resistant grains such as millet and rapoko grown by smallholder farmers.

The MTP recognises the fact while soya- beans, groundnuts, dry field beans and cow peas experienced growth in recent years althogh yields remain low.
Measures to increase output will also target cash crops such as tobacco, which experienced a drop in production from 226 000t in 1998 to 123 000t in 2010.
Livestock production has also declined significantly over the past decade with cattle population now standing at 5 million from 6,18 million in 2000.

But focus will also be placed to increase production and productivity in dairy, sheep, goats, piggery, poultry and ostrich production during the period to 2015.
The MTP has targeted production of 1 950 000t for maize, 600 000t for sugar cane, 240 000t for tobacco, 363 000t for cotton and 107 000t for beef by 2015.

Agricultural production is expected to grow by 18,5 percent in 2010, 14,8 percent in 2012, 8,8 percent in 2013, 7 percent in 2014 and 6 percent in 2015.
Government plans to rationalise land reform to bring stability in the sector through finalisation of the land audit and ensuring land tenure security. Plans are also afoot to rehabilitate existing irrigation infrastructure and develop new facilities to mitigate the negative effects of weather conditions.

Government also contends agricultural mechanisation services are currently short supply. Some engineering disciplines are not well developed while farmers have low skills on building and repairing farm structures.
Effort and resources will be put to enhance agricultural research with focus on applied/adaptive development and strategic research that responds to and addresses national, sectoral and local farmers’ problems and needs.

The MTP also seeks to ensure expansion of agricultural extension services in rural areas and expanding capacity to facilitate transfer of research findings.
Measures will also target agricultural education and training.

Financial institutions would be implored to roll out more financing facilities to the agricultural sector and this would be ably supported through the commercialisation of Agribank to foster partnership with private sector.

The MTP also envisages a departure from State-organised input supply programmes to allow greater interplay of market participants in procurement and provision of agriculture inputs.
To that end the Government would ensure that fertiliser companies charge economic prices and plan production and delivery schedules for inputs.

Measures will also be put taken to ensure the Agriculture Marketing Authority is well financed while reliable marketing and regulation structures for agriculture commodities will also be put in place by 2015.
Agriculture is strategic to the local economy as it provides a source of livelihood to the most Zimbabweans at subsistence and commercial levels. The agriculture sector also provides employment a huge number of people.

The sector accounts for about 20 percent of Zimbabwe’s Gross Domestic Product.

• This is the seventh in a series of articles on the key deliverables of the Medium Term Plan crafted to guide Government programmes in the period 2011- 2015.