The ManicaPost
Obert Chifamba
COMING in the same year the country embarked on an ambitious food self-sufficiency enhancing Command Agriculture programme, last season’s hammering and incessant rains plus the consequent bumper harvest only served to demonstrate Zimbabwe’s potential to produce adequately and even excessively given the proper weather conditions, funding and input support.
And the huge stacks of grain currently littering most Grain Marketing Boards (GMB) landscapes across the country have essentially honed the country’s appetite for more success stories, which has seen the programme whose initial focus was on maize being extended to cover many other crops, livestock and even wildlife while water harvesting came in among the latest additions.
Water harvesting becomes a critical addition to the list given that the majority of Zimbabwe’s farmers survive on rainfed agriculture leaving their success dependent on the benevolence of nature every season. But given the current challenges of global warming, rainfed agriculture is fast becoming a very difficult feat to undertake hence the need for farmers to adopt measures that mitigate the harsh effects of the dry weather that come with the problem.
Dry land farmers need supplementary water sources in the event of bad seasons in which rainfall is erratic. It does not always have to be irrigation, as the procurement and installation of irrigation infrastructure is essentially out of the reach of most farmers. There are however many ways through which farmers can help their cause.
The first step is for them to adopt farming methods that allow their land to conserve moisture, which will be crucial in saving their crops in the event of a drought or just prolonged dry spells, for instance, those that have in recent years been known to come in the month of January.
January has often been the most difficult month for farmers on dry land, as their crops have succumbed to the sweltering heat while they would only watch helplessly.
It is a fact that conservation farming has come to the rescue of many farmers. The zero-tillage method, for example, has allowed farmers in low rainfall regions to score respectable yields even when seasons would have turned hostile to crop farming. Under this method the farmer does not need a plough or tractor to till the land but will only dig holes that will serve as planting stations, which allow water to collect around plant roots when it rains compared to what happens on land that would have been ploughed.
That moisture will be stored in the soil for later use by plants, which allows plants grown using the method to fare better than those on different soil surfaces when there is moisture stress.
It is also critical for farmers to choose the right seed varieties for their different agro-ecological regions. In this regard, Agritex is expected to play the crucial role of advising and educating the farmers on the type of varieties of seed to use, types of fertilizer and the times of planting.
Bindura University of Science Education is one academic institution that is currently working with farmers training them to do water harvesting through making tied contours and to date thousands of farmers have been trained in some districts across the country.
They are also training extension officers and lead farmers culminating in the establishment of 63 with establishing climate farmer field schools that will serve as community learning centres for water harvesting and climate smart agriculture.
On the one hand, farmers can also do literal harvesting of the water during the rainy season and use it later when the weather turns dry. A lot of water runs off every season into rivers, dams and eventually the seas and oceans yet there is very little effort, if any to harness that water into dams or even improvised reservoirs for survival watering in times of dry spells that usually ruin yields and incite food shortages as well as loss of potential incomes.
