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As a new initiative, Command Agriculture is likely to face inevitable challenges.

The Command Agriculture programme is the latest initiative by Government to ensure the primacy of agriculture in the country both as a way to avert hunger and as an economic imperative.Zimbabwe has not realised the full potential of land reform’s agricultural revolution owing to a number of factors, both internal and external.

The greatest external challenges that the sector has faced are relative to the strangling of the economy via Western sanctions, which at some point targeted the country’s land bank, Agribank and the fertiliser industry through Chemplex and Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company.

These sanctions imposed by the US and other Western institutions overtly and covertly, were meant to undermine the success of the land reform programme.

Inclement weather, manifest in frequent droughts, has tended to militate against the country and food security (and this does not apply to Zimbabwe only, but the whole of Southern Africa).

However, Zimbabweans have not been beyond reproach. While the Government has done a lot of good by championing the land reform programme and attendant initiatives to boost production, such as provision of inputs and mechanisation, a good number of farmers have not stepped up to the plate.

In fact, if we were to use that figure in the literal sense, some unscrupulous elements — and they are many, high and low level — have taken the provision of inputs by Government as a festival of looting and splurging of resources.

All this has had the effect of not only derailing the programme and delaying the realisation of the fruits of the land reform programme. It has also held up Government and the people of Zimbabwe to ridicule.

In this light we share Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s disquiet over the abuse of the initiative.

Last week he urged farmers to make good use of inputs availed to them and warned that abusers would be punished.

That is on point — and we hope that quite good examples will be made of unscrupulous individuals to send the message about the seriousness with which this programme and its implementation, is being taken.

Corruption and abuse takes place at various levels and in different forms. The most obvious cases are likely to be the illegal sale of inputs by beneficiaries as farmers divert the inputs to the black market for “quick bucks”.

The monies realised, experiences have shown, end up buying luxury cars, paying for holidays, pampering girlfriends and marrying more wives. We cannot tolerate that as this programme clearly is meant to be national and comes on the back of hunger that not only affects the national stomach, but also gnaws at the coffers as the country has to import grain.

Officials are likely to be corrupt to the extent that they do not give deserving farmers what is due to them, but they may choose to give to their inept cronies and hotel drinking buddies.

Farmers may not be given the full complement of inputs as officials divert them or the same officials may demand kickbacks for farmers to access inputs.

There are already reports that in certain areas officials are withholding application forms and discharging them surreptitiously, corruptly and nicodemously. These and other shenanigans are likely to derail the programme if culprits are not brought to book.

We hope that authorities will put their feet on the ground. As a new initiative, Command Agriculture is likely to face inevitable challenges.

However, we contend that sticky fingers should not be one of those overarching problems. Sticky fingers could easily be cut and this is for the better for all of us as a nation fighting hunger.