Theseus Mauruki Shambare in MUTOKO
THE Government is pursuing plans to establish irrigation scheme business units across Zimbabwe’s 35 000 villages to strengthen climate resilience, guarantee household food security, and transform smallholder agriculture into commercially viable enterprises.
The initiative seeks to harness the country’s more than 10 000 water bodies to help rural communities produce food year-round, reduce dependence on increasingly unreliable rainfall, and generate income through organised agricultural production.
Complementing the initiative is the Presidential Borehole Drilling Scheme, which targets at least one borehole in each of the country’s 35 000 villages, while schools and vocational training centres are also being positioned as centres of agricultural production and business.
Speaking during the belated World Food Day commemorations held at Chitora Irrigation Scheme in Mutoko last Friday, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Water Resources Development Permanent Secretary Professor Obert Jiri said Government wanted every village with access to water resources to establish an irrigation scheme business unit. He said the model would enable communities to convert water resources into productive assets, ensuring that rural households had adequate food while generating income through commercial agriculture.
“If we have an irrigation scheme business unit in every village, as we are planning as Government, these are able to really ensure that we have food security in every village. There is no need for anyone to go hungry when they can invest in a village business unit to ensure that they have enough food for their village,” Prof Jiri said.
He said irrigation schemes should be run as businesses, with farmers coordinating their production according to market requirements while also prioritising food crops for household consumption.
The push comes as climate change increasingly threatens traditional rain-fed agricultural systems, with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) calling for accelerated investment in small and medium-scale irrigation.
FAO’s Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa and Country Representative in Zimbabwe, Patrice Talla Takoukam, said countries could no longer depend on rain-fed agriculture, urging Governments and development partners to strengthen irrigation infrastructure to safeguard food production.
“The time of rain-fed agriculture is over. Either the Government and partners need to figure out how do we can really strengthen support for small-scale farmers through irrigation schemes,” Dr Talla Takoukam said.
World Food Programme country director Ms Barbara Clemens said increased agricultural production should be matched by investment in agro-processing, cold storage and warehousing to enable farmers to derive greater value from their produce.
“Not all tomatoes have to be sold in Mbare and mass markets in their raw form. We can have tomato paste, tomato sauce, tomato juice; we need factories, we need cold storage facilities,” she said.
Ms Clemens called on the private sector to complement Government and development partner efforts by investing in rural communities and establishing processing facilities to strengthen agricultural value chains.
“I think the private sector needs to come in and invest in communities like this to create an eco-system for adding value to tomatoes,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Government, with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and OPEC, is implementing the six-year Smallholder Agriculture Cluster Project (SACP) targeting 78 000 farmers across 18 districts.
Project national coordinator Alex Nyakatsamba said the programme was mobilising farmers into agricultural producer groups and equipping them with business development, financial literacy and climate-smart agriculture skills, alongside financing and market linkages.
“We are also coming in with financing, which are the loans and the grants as the two financing instruments. We are trying to catalyse the smallholder production system so that they increase production and productivity and then link them to formal markets,” he said.
Mr Nyakatsamba said the project was also rehabilitating irrigation schemes and providing climate-proofed infrastructure to sustain agricultural production during droughts and other climate-related shocks.
At Chitora, three agricultural producer groups have benefited from grants amounting to US$45 000 and loans of US$7 000, with total project investment in the three irrigation schemes estimated at about US$61 000.
“They’ve managed to apply for the grants as well as the loans, which were approved, and we have also managed to buy equipment for enhancing the irrigation capacity and also for replacing the watering system that was there before,” Mr Nyakatsamba said.
He said the interventions were intended to ensure farmers continued producing even during periods of drought and flooding.
The commemorations were organised by the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the Rome-based United Nations agencies, the World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organisation and IFAD, under the theme “Innovate Today, Nourish Tomorrow”.
