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Precious Manomano
Herald Reporter
The country has potential to be a net exporter of food and retain its status as SADC’s bread basket following the success of various policies that Government has implemented to revive the agricultural sector, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary Dr John Basera said.
Speaking during a seminar on Zimbabwe Agricultural Transformation Agenda held at the University of Zimbabwe recently, Dr Basera said all successes which were being seen in the sector were as a result of the Agriculture Recovery and Growth Plan introduced in 2020 with the aim to reverse the negative trends in the sector.
He said the country had, as a result of the measures taken to boost agricultural production, realised a bumper harvest of maize, wheat and traditional grains.
“In terms of wheat production, since the beginning of wheat production in Zimbabwe we managed to break the unprecedented record by achieving 375 000 tonnes of wheat against our national requirement of 360 000,” he said.
“Maize production in 2020-2021 period we achieve 2,7 million tonnes, so we are almost there. We are getting to the point of the bread basket of Southern Africa. One of our major clusters was to deal with food security and nutrition towards food self-sufficiency.
“Our economy depends on agriculture at the same time it is vulnerable to climate change, but we have to adapt to climate change vulnerabilities.”
In the advent of new dispensation in 2017, the country managed to set the foundation for economic recovery of different sectors, including agriculture.
Some of the successes such as the Pfumvudza and Command agriculture models left other African countries inquiring on how they could implement them.
Recently, President Mnangagwa went to Dakar, Senegal, to present the successes of Zimbabwe and it was agreed and ratified that Pfumvudza will be adopted across Africa following its big success in Zimbabwe.
Dr Basera said on Command Agriculture, about three countries were in Zimbabwe to learn about the model which crowds in the participation of banks, financial services institutions.
“We need to attain food security with a slant towards import substitution,” said Dr Basera. “That is what we want to be as Africa. I am happy that most of Zimbabwe’s programmes are replicated across Africa.”
Dr Basera said they made a deliberate move to close the borders, especially on unnecessary imports such as onions and tomatoes, to promote local production.
In 2020, under Pfumvudza programme, the Second Republic made a big decision to say every smallholder farmers must adopt the principles and tenets of conservation agriculture so that they climate proof the production.
Maize productivity levels were around 0.5 per hectare, but after the religious implementation of the Pfumvudza programme it rose sharply to about 1.4 tonnes per hectare in 2021.
In the 2020-2021 season, the country achieved a record harvest of 2,7 million tonnes of maize and a combined yield of cereals and traditional grains of 3,1 million tonnes.
Dr Basera said this year, he was expecting a positive harvest following good rains.
Wheat production jumped to 22 percent after a record harvest of 375 000 tonnes produced last season following Command Agriculture, CBZ, AFC, the Presidential wheat programme, as well as private sector wheat initiatives.
Traditional grains production is gathering a positive pace and the Government made a deliberate decision to adopt and promote production of traditional grains so that farmers climate proof traditional grains.
Dr Basera said there was now a directive for rainfall regions three to five, which receive less rainfall, to grow and produce traditional grains.
The area under traditional grains has surged to 30 percent.
Dr Basera said food security food and self-sufficiency will empower the growth of the agricultural economy.
He said the horticulture sub-sector was surging every year, adding that blueberry production increased by 34 percent from 3 500 in 2021 to about 4 700 tonnes in 2022.
He said there was need to explore the southern markets and take advantage of bilateral relations which the country had with other nations.
Dr Basera said Zimbabwe’s total citrus production, including that of South Africa, was one’s morning consumption in China, so there was need to take advantage of that massive market.
Speaking on behalf of the Vice Chancellor of University of Zimbabwe Chancellor Professor Paul Mapfumo, Director Research Professor Florence Mutambanengwe, hailed the transformation of Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector which has impacted positively on the people’s livelihoods.
“We have witnessed good performance in wheat production in the last season which saw us enjoying the current wheat self-sufficiency,” she said.
“This huge achievement from your hard work will make the price of bread go down. We are definitely destined for an unprecedented goal. As University of Zimbabwe we have adopted the heritage based 5.0 philosophy which entails students to churn out innovations in the form of technologies, products, goods and services that have the potential to make a positive contribution with the proposed agricultural transformation.”
Online Reporter