Columbus Mabika-Herald Reporter

The Air Force of Zimbabwe (AFZ) is committed to transforming agricultural systems to reduce food and nutrition insecurity, climate change effects and Covid-19 effects and ensure agriculture fully contributes to the Vision 2030 agenda, a senior officer has said.

Commandant AFZ School of Academic Training Staff, Wing Commander Stanford Ncube said this yesterday while touring Rattray Arnold seed research station in Shamva with students doing an AFZ administration staff course.

 The tour was meant to acquaint the students with knowledge on best agricultural practices and seed varieties.

Wing Commander Ncube said the tour was an important milestone in collective efforts to strengthen the AFZ’s capacity to effectively promote agricultural production, productivity and ensuring sustained national food and nutrition security.

 “As security forces, we part of the family for food production by nature of being in the field of security we have moved from the traditional threats, food and nutrition security has now become part of our domain,” he said.

“We have now moved to fighting other contemporary threats such as food and nutrition insecurity so the main purpose of this visit is to cement the understanding of food security so that as security agents we know which direction we are moving towards. 

“Food and nutrition security remain key areas in the quest to attain an upper middle economy by year 2030.” 

He said the AFZ farm at Blackforby in Mazowe has in recent years doubled productivity following instruction on good farming practices from seed producer Seed Co.

Wing Commander Ncube said the AFZ through its scientific research arm is willing to partner local seed producers to produce high yielding seeds adaptive to contemporary climatic conditions.

Speaking during the tour, seed research and development expert Dr Gorden Mabuyaye called for the upliftment and adherence to best agricultural practices to boost productivity among farmers.

“The template for modern, agriculture and its development is best practices. The new farming methods and practices will boost agricultural productivity by ensuring a match between current conditions and appropriate crops,” he said.

 He said Zimbabwe has made strides in seed development and will continually develop existing seeds.

“Research needs a lot of patience to get meaningful outcomes. With the revised agro-ecological regions we can plan our agricultural activities, change them as the climate changes since we now have it in our GIS computer system. It is linked to the satellite systems,” he said.

He called for the promotion of agro-ecology into farming to help provide a strong focus so as to ensure sustainability and resilience to environmental pressures and climate change.