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THE agriculture industry, arguably, the backbone of the Zimbabwean economy, has been limping for some time now, with crop production falling to disappointing levels largely owing to droughts and lack of funding. Detractors of land reform were wishing production would continue to tumble but developments in the agriculture sector in recent years have proved that Zimbabweans are inherently farmers and despite the drought and stringent lending requirements put by the Western-funded financial institutions, have gone on to perform beyond the expectations of opponents of land reform.

It is not surprising at all that tobacco farmers have exceeded their target and that it is only a matter of time before they achieve the same level of production as that of white former commercial farmers.

Industry stakeholders had set a target of 85 million kg, which the farmers have doubled, producing 192 million kg.

This is the volume of the crop that has been sold at the auction floors to date, putting $566 million into the pockets of the farmers.

From as little as 50 million kg of tobacco soon after the launch of the land reform programme to 75 million kg and to 100 million, rising to 165 million kg in 2013 and 216million in 2014, our farmers have indeed shamed our detractors and proved to the world that, barring droughts, nothing stops them from producing more than 200 million kg.

Now, they have exceeded the target on the backdrop of reduced or zero funding from financial institutions and erratic rainfall.

We can only imagine what our farmers would do if they were well financed and did not depend on rain-fed agriculture but irrigation, only the sky can be the limit for them.

The economy has been sneezing because agriculture had caught a cold but now with the production rebound in the tobacco sector, we are quite convinced that the same success would be replicated in the other sectors.

They have the expertise of producing a variety of crops, among them, tobacco and maize and the factors that have been inhibiting their efforts has been the drought and the illegal sanctions imposed by the West on us yet in spite of all this they did not give up and continued to work round the clock on the farms to ensure the agriculture sector rebounded.

And indeed, we have seen maize farmers doing their part against the background of lack of funding and the droughts to ensure production increases.

The biggest undoing has been drought, which affected last season’s crop resulting in us failing to produce adequately to replenish the strategic grain reserves.

This has nothing to do with the farmers inability but has everything to do with erratic rainfall and this is why now the focus is on irrigation development.

When we took back our land from white former commercial farmers who were holding it, the buzz then was that agriculture would die because, according to them, we were not up to it yet forgetting that it was the same indigenous farmers who were achieving astounding production levels working for white farmers, who had now become proud owners of the land.

We do not even celebrate exceeding the tobacco target because that is what we are renowned for and we have proved time and again that given financial support and barring drought, we can turn the vast tracts of land into greenbelts of crops.