The ManicaPost
MODERN agriculture trends are becoming more business oriented than yesteryear and to be a good producer against a background of changing weather vagaries calls for proper planning and good financial and resource management.
Farming should be viewed as a business, regardless of whether it is being done at subsistence or commercial level. One needs to have records, which can be helpful in planning improvements for that business and making proper management decisions.
Planning enables the farmer to achieve set objectives in relation to the farm and family in a more organised manner. It enables a careful examination of the existing resources and their best allocation; to take decisions in relation to selection of crops, acreage under different crops and kind and number of livestock to be maintained.
It also helps the farmer to identify the input and credit needs, estimating future cost and returns.
However, this is not the case in rural communities, especially in Buhera, where most communal farmers appear unfamiliar with farming issues and hardly plan their operations. A visit to the district showed that they don’t have the proper farming knowledge, training, latest farming and irrigation technology, or equipment to manage the situation.
For most, its business as usual and many of them are not lasting the distance. Those with some level self organisation have a marvellous crop.
Buhera has been stereotyped with lots of negative things – chiefly drought and poverty — but this year the heavens were generous enough, but if the truth be told, the majority of its inhabitants have nothing to show for it in their fields.
This season will be another round fear, hunger and suffering. Buhera, climatologically, has changed a lot and is now characterised by low and highly variable rainfall that makes it unsuitable for crop production.
The effects are to a much higher degree than in the past. Those who lack innovativeness, adaptability and remain cardinally entrenched in the crop production mantra often fail to fulfil their most basic needs, let alone attain those cross-cutting intrinsic dreams or desires.
Because they fail to plan and prepare, then they plan and prepare to fail.
Yesteryear gains of agriculture will continuously be eroded for as long as our farmers keep losing it on the planning side of it. We emphasise on proper planning because the district has been experiencing debilitating food shortages every season and getting emergency food aid. The bulky of the crop is poor due to a combination of leaching of the little available nutrients in the overworked, tired and infertile soils, erratic availability and application of fertilisers, and lack of crop rotation, among other poor agronomic practices bordering on agricultural illiteracy. The incessant rains triggered severe leaching of nutrients from the soil, and high poverty levels meant families could not afford even a bag of fertiliser to nourish the yellowing crops.
The projected harvest, regardless of the fairly distributed rains, will be severely compromised as the crops are yellowing due to nutrients deficiency.
The fall armyworm is also savaging the poor crop.
The farmers have no fertilisers.
The farmers also need to adopt a paradigm shift and explore livestock farming as they cannot win the war against climate change and the resultant successive droughts even if they grow small grains.
Buhera falls under geological Region Five and the types of crops planted include short season maize varieties, sorghum, groundnuts, round nuts, pearl millet, short-cycle beans, rapoko, pumpkins, sweet potato among others.
Poverty remains ubiquitous in the district, but with livestock farming they can never go wrong. Livestock farming can make a positive impact on their lives by reducing their suffering while building their self-sufficiency as rural people.
Government should also prioritise construction of Marovanyati Dam which has been identified by the community to address food and nutritional challenges in the district. It can power irrigation systems that can significantly enhance household incomes and nutritional intake in the arid district.
Irrigation has been a cornerstone of agriculture for thousands of years and has helped food production expand apace with population growth.
For as long as the district relies on rain-fed agriculture, it will remain food-insecure.
Access to irrigation water is the panacea to the current quagmire.
