eBusiness Weekly
Kudakwashe Mhundwa
HARARE – Government should work on introducing a cocktail of measures to capacitate wheat producers and boost local production.
This came out of a conference held by the Zimbabwe Wheat Board recently which was running under the theme promoting value addition and beneficiation through restoring efficiency and sustainability along the wheat bread value chain.
Chief among the reforms is the need for irrigation development as the country is sitting on water bodies which have the ability to irrigate about 2 million hectors.
Addressing delegates at the conference Seed.Co chief agronomist John Basera said the country needs to tap into the vast water resources at its disposal as irrigation development is a key success factor in wheat production.
“Irrigation Is a critical success factor in wheat production, the success of any wheat crop is cantered on successful irrigation scheduling, so we need to up our game in terms of irrigation scheduling and tapping into the water bodies in Zimbabwe as we have 10 000 dams with a capacity to irrigate more than 2 million hectors.
“Irrigation development is very critical we really need to up our functional irrigation from the current 160 000hectors to around 200 000 and there is need to gradually increase it year on year. There is also need for moisture sensors for irrigation scheduling because you don’t need to over irrigate or under irrigate but at the same time water irrigation is one of the major cost drivers in the cost structure per hector,” he said
Other areas which need improvement include the need to increase hectares under wheat production and achieve self-sufficiency.
“The country needs to increase hectares under wheat and also increase productivity, we are coming from 35 000 hectors and at 5 tonnes per hector it will give us 175 000 tonnes but we are saying if we double our hectares and maintain 5 tonnes per hector we will get our national requirement of 375 000 tonnes.
“However if we increase productivity to 5,5 we will get our 412 000 tonnes, but if we increase our productivity to 6 tonnes per hector we will get 450 000tonnes which is in tandem with government vision to get some wheat self-sufficiency in the country” said Mr Basera
This comes as Government is working on a short term plan of increasing wheat production by about 500percent to 600 000 tonnes annually from 120 000 tonnes archived this year.
Speaking at the occasion Deputy Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural resettlement Vangelis Haritatos said “The root cause of our problem is that we simply do not make enough wheat in Zimbabwe so as Government we are working hard to support our farmers with the aim to becoming net exporters not importers.
“Currently the country requires 450 000 tonnes of wheat a year and this season we are expecting 120 000 tonnes so the excess is going to be imported and this continues to drain our finances, As Government we have put in place short term goals which are 600 000 tonnes per year which means the country will produce an excess of 150 000 tonnes that will be kept as strategic reserves,” he said
The conference also resolved that other areas which need attention include addressing costs associated with production (electricity and water costs) ,up scaling harvesting equipment available to farmers as well as increasing procurement prices for the crop.
