George Maponga Masvingo Bureau

The targeted 4 000 hectares of winter maize in the Lowveld has been achieved as sugar producer, Tongaat Hulett Zimbabwe(THZ), fulfilled its pledge to help the nation achieve food security and cut imports.

Tongaat gave the winter maize a major boost this year after agreeing to expand the area under the crop from 326ha last year to 3 000ha, but went on the plant an extra 1 000ha after identifying more irrigable land in Chiredzi and Mwenezi.

The company is working in partnership with Masvingo Development Trust (MDT).

This followed an appeal by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga during a recent visit to Chiredzi, where he implored Tongaat to help ease food shortages and stem the rising food import bill by using available water bodies to grow food.

Tongaat managing director, Mr Aiden Mhere, assured VP Chiwenga that his firm was pulling all stops to identify more land for winter maize.

Masvingo Minister of State for Provincial Affairs, Ezra Chadzamira, who is also MDT patron, was yesterday upbeat about this year’s winter maize project.

“I am happy that we managed to meet our target for winter maize this year, which was increased from an initial planned 3 000ha to 4 000ha in Chiredzi and Mwenezi,” said Minister Chadzamira.

“We want to pay tribute to Government for availing inputs for the programme under the Command Agriculture initiative and Tongaat for providing the expertise and land for this project, which will go a long way in easing the effects of climate change-induced recurrent droughts.”

Minister Chadzamira said the entire 4 000ha of tilled land had been put under maize, after deciding to shelve traditional grains, which will be grown in the summer cropping season.

Initial plans envisaged production of both maize and traditional grains under the winter cropping initiative this year.

According to Minister Chadzamira the rationale for traditional grains seed was to set up a solid foundation of a sustained drive to promote production of drought-tolerant crop varieties across Masvingo, which is traditionally a low rainfall-receiving region.

Targeted crops were sorghum and sunflower seed.

However, Minister Chadzamira said after establishing the exact extent of food shortages facing the nation and the need to preserve foreign currency, it was resolved to dedicate cleared land for maize.

With an average yield of between five to 10 tonnes per hectare, between 20 000 tonnes and 40 000 tonnes of maize are expected from the winter maize initiative.

Harvesting of the crop is expected around November and December.

Besides growing winter maize, Tongaat’s shadow also looms large in seed production with the firm involved in a joint initiative in seed maize growing at Mwenezana Estates with Seed Co on an area averaging about 470ha.

Tongaat incorporated part of the land cleared for the Kilimanjaro Sugar project in Hippo Valley Estates for winter maize production in response to a call by Government to help in mitigating the effects of food shortages caused by erratic rains in the last cropping season.

Government is pushing for optimum utilisation of all water bodies around the country to produce food and help Zimbabwe become food secure as the nation angles to become an Upper Middle Income society by 2030.