Seed CO Zimbabwe managing director Denias Zaranyika

SEED CO Zimbabwe managing director Denias Zaranyika called on farmers to improve yield per hectare in order for the country to retain its breadbasket status.

Addressing farmers at Seed Co’s Rattary Arnold Research Station in Shamva recently, Zaranyika said the same agronomy practices that earned the country the bread basket status should be revisited for farmers to boost output per hectare.

“Let’s visit the best practices that were being employed by our Zimbabwean master farmer and the 10 tonne club members and grain deficits will be a thing of the past,” Zaranyika said.

“Most of these fundamentals are well known to us. How on earth can we still be talking of yields of 1 tonne or 2 tonnes per hectare? It is not just acceptable. Basic agronomy as well as adopting relevant agriculture practices is the way forward. ”

Problems such as late planting, wrong variety choices, plant population issues, funding gaps, harvesting and post harvesting loses were cited as contributing towards reduced yield per hectare.

With an annual consumption of 2,2 million tonnes, increasing yield per hectare to at least 5 tonnes per hectare would allow the country to produce grain for the region considering annual target hectarage per year are over 1,5 million hectares of maize.

The large scale farmers in Zimbabwe occupy 1,4 million hectares, A2 farmers 2,9 million hectares, A1 farmers 5,7 million hectares, old resettlements occupy 3,4 million hectares and the communal areas occupy 16,4 million hectares, meaning the country has enough land to produce for Zimbabwe and the rest of the region.

Being the first to introduce hybrid culture in Zimbabwe, Seed Co’s 727 is the best yielder in Africa and no other variety can match the hybrid, while the organisation has released 56 hybrids to date.

“If we achieve production of over 2,5 million tonnes, then we can say we are clearly on our way to total transformation and reform and as Seed Co, we encourage you to adopt the South African commercial farmers’ model of ordering summer crop seed between February and April,” Zaranyika added.