Zim Records 468 000t Wheat Harvest

Precious Manomano

Herald Reporter

The successful land reform paid dividends to wheat farmers this season following the attainment of a resounding record wheat harvest of 467 905 tonnes compared to 375 000 tonnes last season with farmers praising Government’s fruitful intervention programmes that led to another record harvest. This is the largest harvest since growing of wheat started in 1966 with the harvests last year and this year the first time Zimbabwe achieved self-sufficiency and then a surplus in wheat. Land reform, which gave a lot of farmers access to land, has been matched with the agriculture and food systems transformation strategy which ensures they can use that land effectively to increase production. Zimbabwe is moving ahead on several fronts to ensure that the land reform becomes a resounding success by making sure farmers have the inputs and backing to push production to new heights, far higher than what was produced. Interventions by the Government ensured that farmers had access to financial services and inputs were distributed on time. This season the Government was well prepared in supporting wheat better than the previous seasons as it was working closely with important stakeholders such as Zesa and Zinwa to ensure that there was uninterrupted power supply as well as enough water for irrigation to expand wheat into a significant surplus. Zimbabwe is one of the two African countries, the other being Ethiopia, which are wheat self-sufficient and has been food secure on cereals for the past four seasons after the Government took deliberate steps to ramp up agricultural production. ReadMore