Shashe villagers have lost livestock due to drought.

By Nyasha Chingono

FARMERS in Shashe, a rural community in Beitbridge, are struggling to make ends meet due to the drought experienced in the last season.
Shashe River, normally the source of water in difficult seasons, has dried up due to the El Nino induced drought which ravaged the southern Africa region in the 2015/2016 agricultural season.
Last season, 95 percent of the crop in the Shashe area was a write off, while the community’s only source of livelihood, the Jalukanga irrigation scheme, has not been functioning for the past seven years.
The Financial Gazette’s Agricultural News witnessed desperate villagers waiting for maize distribution last week.
Villagers here have become mere paupers, barely able to provide food on the table.
Following the year 2000’s cyclone Eline that destroyed livelihoods in Mozambique and around the country, the irrigation infrastructure at Jalukanga irrigation scheme was not spared. Jalukanga closed in 2009.
It has taken the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), with help from the European Union (EU), to resuscitate the scheme after seven long years. Government has been unable to assist due to its poor financial position.
“Farming is a non starter here and the only sound investment is irrigation. We last had fair yields between the years 2000 to 2003 after the cyclone. However, last season’s crop was a write off,” Orpheus Ndlovu, an agricultural extension (Agritex) supervisor for Beitbridge East, said during a tour of projects organised by FAO last week.
Farmers at the Jalukanga irrigation scheme, a 57-hectare facility, had over the past few years been forced to engage in food for work programmes to survive.
Most farmers predicted a bleak agricultural season, as rains have remained elusive in the area.
“For the past seven years, my family and I have been surviving through my small business of selling brooms and thatching grass. The weather is not promising a good season, so this irrigation scheme is our hope,” LitsehoTlou, a 28-year-old mother, said.
Beatrice Ncube, 43, who has lost several cattle due to the drought, said last season was the worst drought that Shashe had ever experienced.
“Last season was the worst ever and it left us with nothing to eat. Our cattle are dying and it’s a mammoth task having to feed the cattle and ourselves,” she said.
Small grains have had little success in the Shashe area, but Ndlovu pinned his hopes on the irrigation scheme that is currently on the mend, giving hope to farmers.
“We are having a problem with small grains. So irrigation is the way to go,” said Ndlovu.
FAO under the US$5 million European Union (EU) fund for agricultural development, intervened in the area, successfully rehabilitating 45 hectares of the irrigation scheme.
To boost the availability of water at the irrigation scheme, FAO drilled six boreholes and restored power lines for continuous pumping of water.
“The scheme is now under its first crop and we have enough water to irrigate 45 hectares,” irrigation engineer in the Department of Irrigation Development, Basil Garedondo said.
Twelve hectares of the 57 hectares that constitute Jalukanga irrigation scheme have not yet been resuscitated.
Each farmer was allocated a 0,2-hectare plot where they are expected to produce at least a tonne of maize under the command agriculture programme, with seed having been disbursed already.
Richard Moyo, a plot holder at Jalukanga, said the irrigation programme had been hampered by electricity blackouts.
“The transformer is damaged so we cannot water the ground in preparation of planting next week (this week),” said Moyo.
Moyo also warned that the project’s success could be hampered by power charges; farmers are expected to pay commercial rates for electricity, which they cannot afford.
Agritex officials said they were engaging the country’s power utility on the possibility of lowering the tariff.
Although farmers are faced with the mammoth task of restoring food security in the area that is dependent on relatives working in South Africa, they are determined to work hard to fend for their families.
Government requires US$10 billion to resuscitate 2,5 million hectares of irrigation land around the country, spending US$4 000 per hectare.

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