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Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
The agriculture sector has received a timely boost ahead of the 2015-2016 summer cropping season after the country received $32 million worth of agricultural implements from Brazil under the first phase of the Zimbabwe-Brazil More Food for Africa Programme. Speaking at a Zanu-PF provincial co-ordinating committee meeting recently, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa said Government was expecting to receive the remaining $6 million worth of implements from Brazil in October.

He said Government had already strategised on how targeted beneficiaries would access the implements after setting up eight strategic points from where the equipment will be distributed to selected groups of farmers. VP Mnangagwa said under the programme, Brazil pledged to supply Zimbabwe with $98 million worth of farming implements which would come in three phases.

“Under the first phase we were supposed to receive farming implements worth $38 million from Brazil. However, we have received equipments worth $32 million and we are expecting the remaining $6 million to arrive by October this year. “We have already set up eight strategic centres in each province from where the targeted beneficiaries will access the implements,” he said.

VP Mnangagwa said the farming implements will come a long way in enhancing agricultural productivity and ensuring food security at household level as adopted in the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset). He said some of the implements have been distributed.

VP Mnangagwa said Government had struck a deal with Egypt which would see the country supplying cotton, wheat and maize to the North African country through contract farming. He said Government was in the process of identifying land that would be utilised for the project which he said would transform the country’s agricultural sector.

VP Mnangagwa said some of the places earmarked for the project are Kanyemba along Zambezi Valley, Omay area in Binga and 10 000 hectares of land in Mashonaland East. He said under the agreement, Egypt will supply seed, implements and other resources needed while Zimbabwe would cede land for the project.

“We will grow cotton, wheat and maize on behalf of Egypt. Egypt will supply all the resources, implements and inputs needed for the production of the crops and we will provide land. We will then sell them the produce at our own price,” he said. VP Mnangagwa also reiterated that dairy farms in the Midlands should be spared in the ongoing farm downsizing exercise saying doing so was retrogressive to production and dairy farming will no longer be viable.

He said it was Government’s position that dairy farms should be spared to boost milk production. “I was talking to Midlands chief lands officer Mr (Joseph) Shoko and his (Lands and Rural Resettlement) Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora that it is prudent for the ministry to spare dairy farms so that they become viable. This was the agreement that we made in the first place. We hope that will be followed in the ongoing farm downsizing exercise,” he said.