The ManicaPost
IF done properly, the $500m command agriculture scheme has the capacity to unlock Zimbabwe’s potential to produce enough to meet her food and nutritional security levels, fill strategic grain reserves and surplus to export.
Eligibility into the programme should be purely on merit.
We call upon the authorities to ensure that only those farmers with an impeccable history of production and are interested in the programme are allowed to assume their call and drag the country out of food insecurity.
Farmers naturally have a responsibility to the nation, but this is not the case with some in Zimbabwe.
We condemn any attempts to smuggle unfit farmers through the back door.
Unwarranted favours will militate against the aims and objectives of the programme.
There are lots of bad apples that masquerade as farmers and still need to be taken through the paces and undergo mental transformation to enable them to view farming as a business that must be undertaken with an unqualified responsibility to feed the nation.
Government in the past came up with various initiatives to assist farmers and boost production. These initiatives failed dismally as some of the farmers chose to line their pockets instead of executing their responsibility to feed the nation.
Those allocated farms stripped and vandalised critical infrastructure, those allocated free inputs saw it fit and profitable to sell instead of using them to produce and those allocated farming machinery and implements ripped them apart and no longer have anything to show for it.
Such behaviour should be abhorred as it took the nation back to the drawing board.
Blame the banks, but this is one of the reasons why our financial institutions have become risk averse when it comes to supporting some of these farmers. Indeed the banks have lost confidence in agriculture as a business and Government should confront corruption with intolerance. Only such a stance will create and motivate desire for investment in the sector.
The vetting process should be watertight and restricted to one’s capacity to pour sweat, blood and tears in production.
One’s debt worthiness and past production records should be a must.
Some farmers will be cunning enough to present beautiful proposals done by consultants with the intention to lay their filthy hands on seeds, fertilisers, chemicals and irrigation equipment – but such manoeuvres must be resisted.
Among those who shall queue for consideration are those who had converted their maize fields to tobacco, but failed due to lack of finance.
If those farms were suitable for and had history of maize production, why had they changed them to capital intensive tobacco?
A sense of patriotism needs to be inculcated in those farmers so that they take farming as a serious business within the context of serving the nation.
Farmers should not cut corners.
We feel that for the command programme to succeed, Agritex should be capacitated to the teeth. The farmers need to be monitored and taught how to improve productivity. This is only possible if the scheme is run systematically. Beneficiaries should not use rudimentary agricultural techniques.
They should not plant haphazardly or pay little attention to the quality of maize and the use of fertilisers.
If run unprofessionally as we have seen in the past, productivity will be extremely low. This will further worsen our situation and the country in a cycle of extreme poverty.
