Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary, Professor Obert Jiri
Precious Manomano
Herald Reporter
MORE than 11 million people have benefited from 10 Presidential Schemes introduced to boost household and national food security. Through the people-tailored schemes, beneficiaries are earning a decent living and employment — setting the base for an upper-middle income economy by 2030. The schemes were introduced by the Second Republic to address poverty, unemployment, and malnutrition. The programmes are the Presidential Inputs Scheme, Presidential Cotton Scheme, Presidential Tick Grease, Presidential Rural Horticulture Scheme, Presidential Community Fisheries Scheme, Presidential Rural Poultry Scheme, Presidential Rural Goat Pass-on Scheme, Presidential Solar Scheme, Presidential Borehole Scheme, and Presidential Rural Development Scheme. Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary Professor Obert Jiri said all the schemes that mainly fall within his Ministry’s purview, are meant to develop the country. “The Government has crafted the Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation Strategy which seeks to grow the agriculture sector to a US$14 billion industry, focusing on climate proofing the sector at individual household level through the Pfumvudza /Intwasa programme and dam construction to enhance large scale farming. We should see value addition in the rural areas. “More than 11 million will be empowered through these schemes as Government moves to ensure the attainment of an upper middle-income economy by 2030. Farmers will have access to nutritional food and income through exporting products from the Horticulture scheme and other schemes too,” he said. In 2021, President Mnangagwa extended the Pfumvudza/Intwasa scheme to include cotton as part of accelerating rural modernisation and industrialisation. ReadMore