The ManicaPost
Samuel Kadungure Senior Reporter
SMALL-SCALL farmers should diversify their options, mechanise, innovate, grow seed varieties certified for their regions and embrace good agronomic practices in light of worsening weather conditions to enhance food and nutritional security at household and national level.
This was said by the Minister of State for Provincial Affairs Cde Monica Mutsvangwa last Friday at the Makoni District Agricultural Show, where she also implored stakeholders in the district to pool resources and invest in a permanent facility for exhibitions as the current one is now small.
The exhibitions are currently being held at make-shift Vengere Stadium and Vengere 602, where space is limited and companies or exhibitors cannot build permanent structures because the facilities are not intended for such purposes.
Cde Mutsvangwa challenged the stakeholders to think outside the box and invest in an ideal and standardised exhibition to unlock interest in and attract serious exhibitors.
The Makoni Agricultural Show has recorded many successes, among them coming first at the 2016 Manicaland Agricultural Show. During the same year they came second at the national level. The good exhibits both these events show that Makoni is growing agriculturally.
“Stakeholders need to pool resources together to get a permanent place for exhibition,” said Cde Mutsvangwa.
Between three and five hectares are required to establish a modernised agricultural exhibition facility.Cde Mutsvangwa also hailed the quality of the products, despite challenges drought, pests and diseases.
She said trends show that increasing crop productivity in arid and semi-arid communal areas was difficult due to a blend of highly erratic and low rainfall and degraded soils deficient in plant nutrients and farmers in these regions, who are major beneficiaries of the Presidential Inputs Scheme, need to adopt a paradigm shift and embrace the new techno logy and innovatively diversify their option to tie cropping to livestock to yield better harvests.
The minister said sustainable cropping is the answer to food problems faced by smallholder farmers, adding that they need to heed agronomic advice to grow certified early maturing seed varieties in arid and semi-arid areas whose weather patterns of late had become unpredictable.
Farmers in dry regions need to adopt a paradigm shift and embrace the new seed varieties which mature early and more likely to yield better harvests than past trends where they grew wrong seeds for their areas and ended up struggling to meet the increasing demand for food.
She said the influx of farmers to tobacco has had a serious negative impact on the environment as the tobacco boom relies on fuel wood.
Incidence of cutting down trees for purposes of curing tobacco was still high in A1 and old resettlement areas because most of the resource poor farmers cannot afford to buy coal to cure their tobacco.
She said the ecological disaster cannot be ignored and called on farmers to establish and properly manage the woodlots and natural resources in the resettlement areas. Cde Mursvangwa, however, dissuaded farmers from using prime land to establish woodlots.
