GOVERNMENT is confident that the harvest from the winter wheat crop will be enough to cover nine months, a development that will result in the Central Bank using less foreign currency to import wheat.

The national winter wheat crop assessment conducted by the Agricultural Ministry last week, revealed that winter wheat on 32 000 hectares had germinated while many farmers were still planting a late crop.

Last year the country had only 24 000 hectares under winter wheat.

In the 2016-2017 winter crop season, the country had 33 000 hectares under the crop.

In a recent interview, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development Professor Mthuli Ncube said the winter wheat crop was looking good.

“There is progress in terms of winter wheat and the prognosis from the Ministry of Agriculture is that we might just get a good winter wheat season as we had in 2016-2017, which will be very good indeed as that will reduce the demand for importation of wheat for bread and others. It’s looking promising and farmers had made a lot of progress,” he said.

Prof Ncube said Government has sourced combine harvesters to assist farmers to get the summer maize off the fields as well as for harvesting the winter wheat.

“Farmers will be assisted with combine harvesters that we have already sourced as Government so they can get the crop out quickly to the market,” he said.

Dr John Basera, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture said winter wheat production was looking bright.

“As of yesterday wheat on 32 000 hectares of land had germinated. Last year the country had only 24 000 hectares of land under winter wheat meaning we increased the hectarage by 8 000 hectares.