Figures from the Ministry of Agriculture given to this newspaper show that only wheat is still struggling at the moment but the majority of the crops have done well for the 2010 season. The best performer was tobacco which had 125 000 tonnes produced in 2010 up from 59 000 in 2009, the figures show.
Crops such as maize, cotton, sugar and horticulture all did well and so did beef production, with the erratic rains that the country received appearing to have had minimal impact. Maize had 1 300 000 tonnes produced in 2010 up from the 1 240 000 produced in 2009, while beef had 95 000 tonnes up from the 93 done in 2009.
The Ministry of Agriculture said sugar produced 350 000 tonnes in 2010 which had shot up from the 259 000 tonnes produced previous year. In 2008 sugar had 298 000 tonnes produced the whole year. The Ministry said as far as horticulture was concerned Zimbabwe produced 43 000 tonnes which had shot up from the 35 000 tonnes produced in 2009.
Wheat figures are however disappointing with only 20 000 tonnes produced in 2010 and only 48 000 tonnes, and 34 000 tonnes produced in 2009 and 2008 respectively. The agriculture sector is the mainstay of Zimbabwe’s economy which contributes 16 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The positive figures from the agricultural ministry are the clearest sign of recovery in the farm sector a decade after President Robert Mugabe launched his controversial land reforms. Zimbabwe, which was once a breadbasket of the region, has since 2001 experienced acute food shortages while tobacco farming, its greatest single foreign currency earner, shrank because of Mugabes chaotic and often violent drive to seize land from experienced white farmers for redistribution to blacks.
Post published in: News