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Precious Manomano Herald Reporter
There is need for an inward approach in attaining food self-sufficiency through policies that promote both the private sector and local farmers to take part in the agriculture value chain, Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Permanent secretary Dr John Basera has said.
The Second Republic has put in place measures to ensure food sufficiency through various agricultural transformation programmes.
It has also initiated public-private sector engagements to ensure its projections of a harvest of about 3 million tonnes of maize from the present season, are realised.
Speaking after touring processing plants at National Food Holdings Limited,Dr Basera said he was impressed by the company’s contribution especially food security towards self-sufficiency in Zimbabwe.
He said the engagements between the private sector is a strategic move endowed with lots of potential to propel the agricultural sector to high levels of growth.
“What we are witnessing is the improvement of the agricultural value chain to ensure food security, but of course our main thrust towards food self-sufficiency so we have been touring national food holdings, we are really impressed by their contribution.
“Its trust towards, modernisation and also trying to improve production processing and efficiencies. Their model has got a stunt towards backward integration whereby they are trying to ring fence raw material supply for their sub industries so we are seeing that the company is investing quite a lot in fact about US$30 million per year in terms of supporting winter wheat production as well as summer maize and soya bean production that is through the contract farming model which Government started to operationalise in 2020,” he said.
Dr Basera applauded the work at the processing plant saying it will boost production, capacity and encourage competitiveness of Zimbabwean products.
He said they are positively responding to the Government’s call in 2020 of at least producing about 30 percent of their processing requirements and by supporting local farmers.
National Foods Limited Group chief executive Mr Mike Lashbrook said they have invested millions in setting up state-of-the-art processing plants to replace old mills and ramp up production in the country.
“The company remains positive on the outlook and the future of the Zimbabwean economy hence it has invested over US$30 million into the country every year. We produce about 600 000 tonnes of maize every year,” he said.
The company produces human and livestock feed that have become part of every Zimbabwean household throughout the century.
It recently delisted from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange where it had been trading since 1975 and it was also listed on the foreign-currency-denominated Victoria Falls Stock Exchange to unlock value and increase production as it chases a value addition and industrialisation drive in line with the Second Republic’s economic transformation agenda targeted at an upper middle income society by 2030.
The private sector should at least contribute 40 percent of the production of their raw material requirements in line with Government policy.
Online Reporter