Time to revive agricultural sector
Revelations by the World Food Programme (WFP) that “the food situation in
Zimbabwe has deteriorated more drastically than expected,” are worrying.
This dire situation was further confirmed by the Minister of Agriculture and
Mechanisation Joseph Made who recently announced that 500 000 hectares of
the maize planted during the 2011/12 planting season have been written off.
With more than one million people facing starvation in Zimbabwe, a country
that used to be the breadbasket for the Sadc region, it is surely time for
some serious interventions.
Since the country’s food security status took a dive following the
fast-track land reform programme, there have been many attempts to revive
the agricultural sector.
Although there have been success stories here and there, the situation has
been mostly sombre and many Zimbabweans continue to go hungry. Binga, Kariba
and Mudzi have been observed to be worse off with over 30% of the people
being food insecure.
Made blamed the food insecurity situation to poor rains. This, however, is
just but a tip of the iceberg as the problem is way bigger than that.
The disaster in agriculture is owing to the fact that many programmes have
failed to look at the source of the problem holistically with the aim of
establishing how the country can achieve long-term sustainability and
achieve food security for every Zimbabwean while the sector once again
contributes significantly to the GDP.
This, I believe, is very possible if, like Zambia and Kenya have
successfully done, Zimbabwe follows through the Comprehensive Africa
Agriculture Development Plan (CAADP), a framework that offers a better
direction at the moment.
CAADP, a “continental-wide movement of social transformation for African
agriculture and food security”, envisions the restoration of agricultural
growth and food security in Africa. A number of developmental partners are
supporting the implementation of the CAADP agenda through the Multi-Donor
Trust Fund and other initiatives. For instance, Africa Lead, a capacity
building project of the US’ Feed the Future initiative, has held two
training sessions in Zimbabwe so far to scale up on food security in support
of the CAADP agenda.
Under the CAADP principles, the initiative should be country-led, that is,
the responsible ministry in each participating country, after
multi-stakeholder engagement, is expected to come up with an evidence-based
agricultural investment plan in line with the CAADP framework.
If the CAADP agenda is planned and implemented well in Zimbabwe, I believe
it would be a matter of time before agriculture, a panacea to our food
shortage problems, is revived.
The key however lies in channelling energies towards strengthening the four
pillars that have been established through the CAADP process to be the basis
for agricultural success: extending the area under sustainable land and
water management and reliable water control systems; and implementing
agriculture research, technology dissemination and adoption, among the
pillars.
The CAADP framework points to the need to link environmental factors to
agricultural productivity as one key angle.
Among the environmental factors paid due cognisance is the need for farmers
to practise sustainable land and water management and operate in a manner
that does not translate to land degradation because when that happens, crop
yields cannot be expected to increase.
There have been numerous reports of the “new farmers”, through detrimental
farming practices, tiring the soils and clearing the land of trees,
resulting in severe soil erosion and the resultant low productivity.
Agro-forestry and taking up conservation farming have been identified to be
among the viable solutions.
Climate change has also been identified as a factor to seriously consider as
the new agricultural framework is being drafted, considering that the
effects are expected to be felt more acutely in the coming years. As such,
agricultural programmes would be expected to take this into account and have
adaptation mechanisms put in place so that agriculture may flourish, even in
the face of erratic rainfall patterns, floods, extreme hot weather
conditions, and all other calamities that come with climate change.
By Chipo Masara