Walter Mswazie Masvingo Correspondent
WINTER wheat farmers across the country should invest in water infrastructure so as to achieve better yields, a senior Government official has said.

Speaking on the sidelines of a tour of his thriving 150-hectare winter wheat farm in Masvingo yesterday, Agriculture, Lands and Rural Resettlement Deputy Minister Davis Marapira said there was great potential for wheat farmers in the country but they were failing to meet demand as they did not have enough water for irrigation.

He said to address these challenges, a comprehensive water harvesting programme was needed. He said at present , individual farmers were making efforts to invest in weirs or dams.

“Our farmers have a potential to produce at least 400 000 tonnes of wheat per year, which is enough to sustain the market. However, due to absence of sustainable water sources, only 65 000 hectares are produced per annum,” said Deputy Minister Marapira.

He also urged farmers to employ mechanised agriculture where machinery would do most of the job as part of international best practice in the agricultural sector.

“There is need for our farmers to invest in water harvesting through constructing small individual dams or weirs. There is also need for a farmer to invest in mechanised agriculture comprising equipment like centre pivots, mechanised driers, combined harvesters, etc.

“While farming is considered as labour intensive, when one uses correct machinery, there is no need to hire more labour, as the machinery will do most of the job,” he said.

He, however, bemoaned the scarcity of mechanised driers, and attributed the challenge to the low uptake of winter wheat farming, especially in provinces like Masvingo, Matabeleland South and North.

He also said those in maize farming were facing the same challenges and called on financial institutions to avail lines of credit to commercial farmers so that they could buy mechanised driers.

Cde Marapira, who has a thriving 300-hectare maize crop at another farm at Roy, about 30km along the Masvingo-Mutare Road, said he was expecting to produce at least 1 200 tonnes of wheat from his farm in September.

On average, the return for wheat is about $2 to $3 per dollar invested.

The country needs at least 400 000 tonnes of wheat per year but it has been failing to reach that target with farmers producing only, 65 000 tonnes annually.