Home-grown agriculture

Farming in the southern African country is a challenge, especially for new farmers due to shortages of fertiliser, seed and limited water supplies. To avert the obstacles, Biti has unveiled the “voucher system” which will be used to acquire seed and fertilisers for small scale farmers, A1 farmers, communal farmers, the vulnerable and farmers in old resettlement areas.

The package won the support of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development minister Joseph Made who said the US$21 million facility would compliment inputs initially availed by government which have been woefully inadequate to satisfy farmer demands.

“We are now going to add an additional 40 000 families, bringing families being supported by government and donors to 1 million. We have agreed to speed up the process,” Made said. The Finance minister has also promised to support large scale commercial farmers, the A2 farmers with US$54 million package.

The Meteorological Department recently forecast that meaningful rains will start mid-November, with some parts of the country expected to receive heavy rains in excess of 50 millimetres, and the country was hoping for a bumper harvest. Biti said he hoped the investment in agriculture would help secure food supplies domestically and boost GDP growth. “We have put in place the resources to enhance domestic production,” Biti said.

The poorly funded land reform programme has slashed agricultural production, collapsing production in Zimbabwe, once a bread basket of southern Africa. Production in the farm sector plunged by 60 per cent after President Robert Mugabe’s often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms in 2000 knocked exports and denied the country badly needed foreign currency inflows.

But the economy has started to recover, expanding for the first time in a decade by 5.7 per cent in 2009 under a unity government between Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. The economy is expected to grow eight per cent

this year on the back of increased agricultural production, and cash crops such as tobacco, one of the major forex earners for Zimbabwe. Biti was on a drive to also secure future food supplies and defend against future inflationary rises in the prices of basic foodstuffs.