malvernmugadzikwa
Oliver Kazunga
THE 114th edition of the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show was highly successful, demonstrating the country’s resilience to the adverse effects of the El Niño-induced drought.
Zimbabwe and other countries in Southern Africa have experienced the El Niño-induced drought, which led to a poor 2023/2024 agricultural season that has seen 70 percent of the crops in the country declared a write-off.
This year’s edition of the show, which was officially opened by Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi, was held in Harare under the theme “Cultivating Prosperity: Growing business. Innovating for change. Nurturing our Future”.
In separate interviews on Friday, stakeholders in the agriculture sector said, despite the country reeling from drought, which has seen crop yield plummeting, the quality of the crops and livestock displayed at the show was impressive.
Zimbabwe Farmers Union executive director Mr Paul Zakariya noted: “In terms of quality of produce, of course, you would realise that most of these farmers would have come from district and provincial shows. So, the quality has not been compromised.
“What has been compromised are the yields because of the drought. The yields were very much depressed and in some cases farmers did not even produce anything.
“But for things that were brought as exhibits, these were of top-notch quality for both crops and livestock, a clear demonstration of the country’s resilience to the adverse impacts of the El Niño drought.”
The event, which is Zimbabwe’s premier agricultural expo, this year attracted nearly 600 exhibitors from 13 countries, including the host, while last year, only five countries were represented.
At this year’s show, foreign participants were from the Southern African Development Community, Asia and Eastern Europe.
Among them were Russia, India, South Africa, Zambia, Pakistan, Eswatini, Japan, Russia, Mozambique, China, Malawi and Tanzania.
The expo’s sections included agri-produce that only draws entrants from winners of provincial shows, 10 from each region; tobacco — a section that features displays of produce from winners of the provincial competitions; and the cotton sector, which draws entries from the eight cotton-growing provinces.
Emphasis for the cotton section was on productivity and yield levels this year.
“If you look at even the livestock section, you would see that there is a lot of work that is going on, reflecting also on fodder or stockfeed manufacturing that is happening on the farms.
“There is a lot of innovation that is coming in that regard . . . we have not experienced too many livestock deaths because of the preparedness for the drought. You would see hay moving from the northern parts of the country going to the southern parts and mainly boreholes that have been sunk to sustain the livestock.
“We are quite confident of the measures that were put in place and the conference that targeted the livestock sector. It was actually speaking to what I would call is happening in-season.
“So, all the strategies to ensure that livestock quality improves from breeding, all the way to value addition, meat processing and so on, were all covered and I am sure it opens up other people’s minds to look at the opportunities they can pursue,” he said.
This year’s show also saw stakeholders successfully hosting the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Conference, as well as the Research for Agricultural Excellence Indaba and Diplomatic Network Business conferences.
“The conference on research — everything starts with research and without research there is no innovation or kick-in measures to survive; there is no resilience. That conference was very informative and we are quite happy overall when we look at the performance of our farmers or from an exhibitor point of view,” said Mr Zakariya.
In an update released on August 23 ahead of the show, the Zimbabwe Agricultural Society (ZAS) said this year, the available exhibition space was 78 224 square metres (m2), a 2 percent increase from 77 000m2 that was available last year.
At the time, ZAS highlighted that the demand for exhibition space was very strong, with 530 exhibitors having taken up 78 000m2 of the total available space.
Consequently, this represented a significant improvement from the previous year, when 525 exhibitors occupied 73 000m2 of the available 77 000m2.
ZAS has attributed the growth in both the total available space and the number of exhibitors to the continued popularity and importance of the show.
ZAS chief executive officer Dr Andrew Matibiri told this publication last Friday that the quality and quantity of exhibitions of agricultural produce were as good as ever.
“There was no decline in quality or quantity of entries, demonstrating the country’s resilience to the drought.
“Also, the number of people coming to the show, although I do not have the final figure at the moment, they appeared to be very good, better than in previous years,” he said.
Dr Matibiri attributed the improvement in quality of the exhibits to Zimbabwe’s adaptation to climate change.
“Basically, people are now almost adapting to climate change and they’ve learned ways and means of producing good quality crops and livestock.
“Admittedly, the bulk of the country was negatively affected significantly by the drought, but those who are able to produce are still producing good quality.
“For example, the tobacco sector, as you know, the quantity of tobacco produced this year was affected by the drought, but the quantity was over 230 million kilogrammes (kg) sold this year.
“The quality of the tobacco that was brought to the show was very good,” he said.
As a result of the drought, Zimbabwe’s cotton yield declined this year to 13 million kg. Dr Matibiri said despite the decrease in yield of the white gold, the quality of the crop brought to the show was good.
On the livestock sub-sector, he said the animals at the show were lively and there was increased participation, with over 140 cattle, and hundreds of sheep, goats, rabbits and poultry on display.
“Again, this has shown that the livestock sector is also doing very well. The farmers or the breeders are doing a good job in producing for the country.”
Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union president Dr Shadreck Makombe said they are grateful that the show was successfully held on the back of the El Niño drought.
“We are grateful that the show was held considering where we are coming from — Covid-19. We had challenges and we still have challenges as most companies and even farmers have not recovered.
“Given the situation, we are saying we are there, but there are a lot of challenges.
“From a farmer’s perspective, we are coming from a drought and from a drought you cannot expect the best of everything, but the exhibits at the show were of high quality, depicting the country’s resilience to the El Niño-induced drought,” he said.
Online Reporter