George Maponga in MASVINGO

THE Lowveld winter maize project is on the right track after Masvingo Development Trust (MDT) sealed a deal with sugar producer, Tongaat Hulett Zimbabwe, to prepare 3 000 hectares targeted for maize and traditional grains.

Planting is expected to be completed by the end of this month as inputs have already been secured under the Command Agriculture programme.

MDT has started registering A2 sugarcane farmers at Hippo Valley, Triangle and Mkwasine Estates, who offered a combined 1 200ha of their irrigable land for the food initiative.

This followed a request by Masvingo Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Cde Ezra Chadzamira, who is the winter maize project patron.

Besides land offered by cane farmers, MDT secured additional land for this year’s project at Mwenezana Estates in Mwenezi to bring the total land outlay available for the project to more than 3 000ha.

This is approximately 10 times the 327ha tilled last year whose output was 1 182 tonnes.

“We have a target to put over 3 000ha under different crops during this year’s Lowveld winter farming programme and we are happy with the response from A2 cane farmers who also offered us land to produce grain and we are currently registering them for allocation of inputs under the Command Agriculture initiative,” said MDT chair Cde Lovemore Matuke.

“The farmers will start getting inputs in the near future. We want everything to be flexible so that there are no disruptions. We sealed a deal with Tongaat to do the land preparation and everything is on course and we should have finished planting by the end of June.’’

Besides maize, the MDT is also producing sorghum and sunflower seed under a grand initiative to make Masvingo food self-sufficient and the nation’s breadbasket through promoting production of traditional grains that are drought tolerant.

Cde Matuke praised Tongaat for embracing the winter maize initiative, which had gone a long way in mitigating the effect of successive droughts in Masvingo. If the programme was replicated across other parts of the country located close to water bodies like the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe could be food secure.

“At an average yield per hectare of five tonnes, we are looking at producing around 15 000 tonnes of maize and traditional grains which is a step in the right direction in the quest to tackle food insecurity in Masvingo and the entire nation at large,” said Cde Matuke.

He said more cane farmers would be roped in under the food initiative to diversify their sources of income using their fallow land while contributing to food security.

Recently, chair of the Commercial Sugar Cane Farmers Association Mr Admore Hwarare said his members were going to help Government in the fight against drought by availing irrigable land for winter grain production.

Mr Hwarare said as beneficiaries of Government’s land reform programme, cane farmers were duty-bound to help the nation end food shortages by venturing into maize farming.

The winter maize project was conceived in the early 1990s after the country was gripped by a crippling drought and since then, the initiative has continued to gain traction in the wake of climate change-induced droughts.