Midlands crop assessment complete

The Department of Crops and Livestock under the Ministry of lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement has completed its crop assessment in the Midlands, with results showing the crop situation in the province was a complete write off.

Provincial Crop and Livestock officer Mrs Madelina Magwenzi said the province was now compiling a final report to be submitted to their ministry.

She said the situation on the ground was dire, with the province now banking only on the irrigated crops.

“We will obviously give the media a full comment after we have competed compiling our final report and submitted it to the ministry. What we can say at the moment is that the situation on the ground in the province is not good for the farmers and the assessment report will be sent to the responsible ministry at the end of the month,” she said.

Mrs Magwenzi said the province was only likely to get some harvests from the irrigated crops which she said were also affected by the fall armyworm.

“The challenge is that the area under irrigation in the province is so small and it was affected by the fall armyworm.

“What it means is that we will not get what we expected due to the pests,” she said. Mrs Magwenzi said livestock were also likely to be affected in most parts of the province where grazing pastures were already dwindling.

“We also have a problem in terms of our livestock in the province. We have areas like Mberengwa and Gokwe North where there were no rains received with some livestock already starving,” she said. Mrs Magwenzi urged farmers in hard hit areas to consider de-stocking to minimise losses.