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Zimbabwe is not the best watered country in Africa, let alone the world, and while there is a swathe of fairly good land, farming regions one and two, where dryland farming will produce good yields of maize and other water-hungry crops, even in drought years, most of the country is a lot more arid.

Research has always, at least in the past, concentrated on the better farming areas. This was the land that the settler-colonialists grabbed and they called the shots in those days. The arid areas were generally where black families were dumped, or were parcelled out in huge ranches.

Even with land reform there is a tendency in commercial seed research to “follow the money” and concentrate on the farmers who will buy the most seed.

Admittedly some seed houses have been developing varieties of maize for the less well-watered areas, but this is an addition to their main business, and again the research on the traditional grains has been a little haphazard, largely built on the varieties that were developed for stock feeds and beer rather than tasty food.

Irrigation is making a difference, and will make ever larger differences as the Government accelerates its programmes and builds more dams, drills more boreholes and along with the farmers invests in the irrigation equipment. But there are limits and the majority of farm land will always be either without irrigation, or with just emergency systems that can help a bit in the worst of droughts.

So we need to work out how to farm arid and semi-arid land better so that those whose farms are on this land can earn the same sort of incomes as those on better-watered lands. We cannot leave a whole of people behind.

Great Zimbabwe University, placed in arid Masvingo Province from its beginnings, a few years ago took up the challenge of arid agriculture with its International Research Centre for Drylands Agriculture (ICEDA) in Chivi, which definitely qualifies as a well-populated arid area and where the communities need to build farming systems that produce wealth if they are not to be left behind.

The centre combines research into the sort of crops that can grow in Chivi, plus building businesses that use those crops and bring in other strings of income for local farmers, one being free-range chickens, a premium product compared to factory chickens, but one requiring proper abattoirs and strict adherence to health regulations to produce those higher profits.

Part of the incentive to do something very useful came from President Mnangagwa’s stress on the heritage-based Education 5.0, where theory is retained, but as the base that needs to be applied in useful ways to create innovative systems that produce wealth.

The practical application of theory is as important as the theory itself.

A lot of academics are as keen on applying knowledge as on doing the original research, and did not need to be persuaded.

While a pile of research papers can establish an academic reputation, looking at a few thousand people who now have a significantly better life thanks to the applications of that research is more satisfying.

And anyway, academics will always write up the applications of their theory, so they still win in the dusty corridors of universities.

ICEDA reckons traditional grains are the way to go for most dryland farmers, something most people agree with, at least in theory, although those who buy their food seem to overwhelmingly prefer to buy maize products.

There are changes, oddly enough among the better off. The variety of traditional-grain products, and the shelf space devoted to them, is far greater in northern Harare supermarkets than in the city centre.

This has tended to even make traditional grain products a semi-luxury item, with producers again “following the money”.

ICEDA wants more mass production, but retaining the product range. Its new milling plant will be processing 20 000 tonnes of traditional grain a year, providing a solid market for farmers in Chivi and probably further afield, and a range of products using that grain.

Certain technical complications with milling traditional grain, for a start the hard husks, have been solved as academics put their minds to practical engineering and develop ways to do a job better at lower cost in wear and tear.

ICEDA is backing up this commercial operation with continuing research into traditional grains.

We hope they, and others in the same field, will be looking at far more of the hundreds of varieties that used to be grown in Zimbabwe as these are the indigenous grains of Africa and so at one time would have avoided monocultures.

Careful variety hunting, and old ladies might be a source of far more information when looking at traditional products, will be needed.

There is no need to concentrate on just one set of tastes. A proper traditional grain cuisine should have a wide variety of products with many different tastes, the opposite in fact of the fairly standard white maize market.

ICEDA have established a free-range chicken business, handing out batches of 100 chicks and starter food packs, to selected poultry farmers, and setting up a proper chicken abattoir to slaughter the grown birds when they are brought in.

The pricing shows that ICEDA are looking hard at value added, by choosing a product where the best prices can be obtained, so there are more rungs on the ladder of value. This is an economic model that produces more wealth for both farmers and processors.

Another change for arid area farmers has emerged in Matabeleland South, where a group of farmers contracted by a former landowner in the area are now producing air-cured tobacco once again after many years. We assume the correct varieties are being grown, and the market for such tobacco could be huge.

Zimbabwe wants to be a major cigarette exporter, but many of the best-selling brands in the world include a percentage of air-cured tobacco for taste and flavour on the flue cured base.

So a serious cigarette manufacturing industry will need quite a few tens of thousands of kilogrammes of what are termed Oriental tobaccos, and if these can be grown, and possibly should be grown, in more arid areas then tobacco farming can be another strand of income for far more farmers.