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DOOMSDAYERS, who had written off Government as incapable of mobilising funding for the 2016/17 agricultural season, should eat humble pie after Government secured close to half a billion dollars. Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced on Monday that Government had secured $423 million to support agriculture.The news created huge excitement among Zimbabweans in general and farmers in particular and left the misanthropes in opposition political parties disenchanted. The MDC-T and its appendages are known to fight anything that seeks to empower the people and will rejoice endlessly when the Government fails to come to the rescue of the people.

They have been humbled as Government has loudly communicated its intentions for this season and many seasons to come that it will always stand by the farmers to ensure productivity.

Farmers have the land, thanks to the successful implementation of the land reform programme and the farming expertise, but what has been problematic over the years has been funding as banks, with links to agents of regime change, have always made it difficult to borrow money. In many instances, the cost of borrowing is highly prohibitive while collateral requirements are stringent.

Government intervention through various programmes, including command agriculture, appear to be the panacea to the funding problems that farmers experience. There is no doubt that agriculture remains the anchor of poverty reduction and that its funding should never be viewed as luxury.

When we talk of agriculture, we are not just talking about tilling the land; we are talking about food security and it must be borne in mind that matters of food security are national security issues and whosoever agitates against supporting agriculture should be viewed as an enemy of the State, without any doubt.

It has been said many times that when agriculture catches a cold, the whole nation sneezes and surely we do not need a rocket scientist for us to understand the role that agriculture plays in economic development.

The Sadc Climate Outlook has predicted normal to above normal rainfall in some parts of the country and with the effort coming from Government, we do not see how and why our farmers can fail to produce this season. The distribution logistics of the crop inputs should be in place now to ensure that farmers receive their inputs in time and take advantage of the forecast good rainfall.

We want to commend the Government for always standing with the people, in good and bad times. By securing $423 million, it has taken the huge burden off the shoulders of the farmers and essentially that is what a Government with the interests of the people at heart will do.

This is not the first time it has shown that it is a Government of the people and it will surely not be the last time that it works round the clock to ensure agriculture gets the deserved impetus.

It is encouraging to note that negotiations for a further $500 million are progressing well and that should see our agriculture, battered in successive seasons by drought, rebounding to the levels that will see us taking our rightful position as the breadbasket of Southern Africa.

Obviously, to the opposition political parties, this is the kind of news they frown upon as it puts spikes in their regime change agenda. Their agenda works in a country that is regressing and without any strategy and not to a country, like ours that is progressing as evidenced by the programmes planned for this season.

Indeed, the kind of support that the Government has secured for agriculture has put the prophets of doom in a state of confusion. Let them remain there!