Sifelani Tsiko Agric, Environment & Innovations Editor
Thembi Mlilo, a smallholder farmer at Sibangani Village in the Umzingwane District of Matabeleland South, can now look forward to harvesting and threshing her sorghum crop with ease, in less time and attain cleaner grain more than ever before following the introduction of mechanisation to this process.

Mlilo and other farmers in the Vusanani Group benefited from the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund’s long-term development initiative called the Matabeleland Enhanced Livelihoods, Agriculture and Nutrition Adaptation (MELANA) project which was started in 2016 and runs through to March 2021.

Under this US$80 million initiative supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government with funding from the European Union (EU), the Embassy of Sweden and the UK Department for International Development (DFiD), the farmers got 70 percent financial support for the procurement of bushmeal hammer mill and sorghum threshers.

For years, Mlilo says, traditional sorghum threshing was a laborious, manual and a slow exercise that was mainly done by beating the harvested heads with sticks on bare ground in bags or rocky ground.

In addition to this, she says this torturous exercise exposed people threshing to grain dust with skin and respiratory problems, resulted in losses due to spillage, incomplete removal of the grains from the heads, grain damage and contamination with soil, stones and other impurities.

With a new mechanised hammer mill and thresher, Mlilo and her peers now thresh their sorghum in one go and produce clean grain ready for the market that requires no further processing.

“The use of the hammer mill has made our life a lot more easier,” she says. “The thresher can produce five or more bags of sorghum per hour depending on the moisture content of the heads. Manual threshing required a lot of labour just to winnow one bag of sorghum.”

The thresher can be moved easily from one farmer to another once the harvested heads are ready. Machine threshing of sorghum has generated a lot of excitement among the elderly women and a lot of interest among the youth who are keen to see simpler and faster methods of production.

Members of the Vusanani Group also produce bushmeal feed for their livestock using a hammer mill they procured with the support of MELANA.

The group, which was trained in crop and animal husbandry, is now producing low-cost feed using locally available resources such as tree branches and pods which are rich in protein and are cheaper compared to conventional feed.

Members of the Vusanani Group now produce stockfeed using crop residues, monkey-bread and acacia seeds rich in protein which are mixed with chicken droppings, sorghum, maize and coarse salt to help farmers save their cattle from drought.

They sell a 50kg bag of bushmeal feed for $100, which is much cheaper than feed produced by millers who sell it at rates of up to $500 a bag.

The group has also received a boer goat from MELANA for their goat project and the improved feed availability through bushmeal production complements this activity  well.

“We raised $10 000 and MELANA contributed about 70 percent towards the purchase of a hammer mill for bushmeal production and threshing of sorghum and millets,” says Mlilo, leader of the Vusanani Group.

“Since 2019 we have sold 35 tonnes of bushmeal to over 350 farmers. We earned more than $16 000, got 17 buckets of maize in barter trade while we got an additional $1 967 from grinding services.

“We saved a lot of cattle which were dying because of lack of pasture. We shared about $2 676 after expenses and also bought a scotch-cart for value locking.”

Rodney Mushongachiware, a market linkage specialist with the MELANA project, says harvest mechanisation offers farmers some ways to maintain profitability, to reduce production costs and contribute to their ability to expand their output.

“The introduction of multi-crop threshers and the hammer mill has reduced the amount of labour and time required to process sorghum and millets,” he says.

“Using sticks to thresh resulted in the production of poor quality grain which was contaminated with soil and other impurities. The mechanisation process is ideal for them because it is helping them to produce good quality sorghum grain which can fetch good prices on the market.”

Farmers can now produce up to 15 tonnes of sorghum using about 5 litres of fuel to power the threshers.

Mechanisation of agriculture is occurring at a slow but steady pace in Zimbabwe because of limited resources to procure machinery from both local and foreign suppliers.

The MELANA initiative is helping to bring farming mechanisation back on the policy and agricultural development agenda in the country.

Migration has hit hard large swathes of Matabeleland North and South provinces which border South Africa and Botswana resulting in the shortage of labour on both smallholder and commercial   farms.

The youth go to neighbouring countries in search of jobs leaving the elderly to till the land.

But the introduction of appropriate technology such as threshers, hammer mills, solar-powered dip tanks and piped water irrigation will over time interest the youth to stay on the farm.

“When our children visit us during the holidays they are surprised about how mechanisation, solar water pumps, piped water and irrigation are making our life on our land better,” she says.

“Jobs are now a problem in South Africa and Botswana and I hope they will find it wise to take up farming and livestock rearing back here at home. Farm mechanisation is very important for this to happen.”

Farming technologies are now helping them to mitigate the effects of climate change and to protect environmental resources and livestock.

Access to water is helping them to overcome hunger and poverty as they adopt technologies that improve the production of traditional grains and bushmeal for their  livestock.

Government and its development partners have embarked on several initiatives to promote farm mechanisation to build climate change resilience and reduce hunger and poverty among farming communities.

This has an added effect of improving food, nutritional and income security for the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Mechanisation covers all levels of farming and processing technologies, from simple and basic hand tools to more sophisticated and motorised equipment.

It reduces hard labour, relieves labour shortages, improves productivity and timeliness of agricultural operations, improves the efficient use of resources, enhances market access and contributes to mitigating climate- related hazards.

Experts say it promotes the attractiveness of agriculture and its value chains for the young generation.

The only challenge is that farmers commonly lack capital to invest in the farm power required to boost food production.

But with development initiatives implemented on 30:70 resource contributions, farmers can be assisted to secure farm machinery critical to their farming activities.

“Lack of modern farming techniques poses a huge threat to the food security position of people in the drought-prone Matabeleland region,” says Mushongachiware.

“Unless the Government and its development partners promote the uptake of new farming technologies, most people in the Matabeleland region will continue relying on food aid.”