Zimpapers Logo

Cletus Mushanawani Mashonaland Central Bureau

MBIRE Rural District Council, in partnership with development partners, has embarked on pen fattening and nutritional garden projects to help improve the locals’ incomes.

The council’s chief executive, Mr Claudius Nyahuma Majaya, said the projects were being implemented jointly by the local authority and ActionAid, through an alliance, Zimbabwe Resilience Rebuilding Fund.

“The basic components of the projects are the pen fattening centre and nutritional gardens,” he said.

“Our own people are implementing the projects. They will be bringing in cattle at the pen fattening centre and will get an off-taker, who will come and buy them.

“We have done that before, but I am not privy to the numbers of the cattle that we pushed out last year. I am very certain that there are over 200 cattle that passed through the pen fattening process at the centre.

“We also have small gardens where an individual farmer has about three square metres for a garden where they grow their crops.”

Mr Majaya said they had constructed an office to house an Agritex officer to assist the local farmers with the basic knowledge of their projects. “This is supposed to work as a learning centre so that people can acquire the necessary knowledge to use at their respective homes,” he said. “We have realised that we are a livestock area and promoting this line of business will improve people’s incomes. We expect people to be constructing their own cattle pen fattening structures at their homes.”

Mr Majaya said 60 households has benefited from the nutritional gardens.

“About 60 households are benefiting from the nutritional gardens. Water is readily available as there is a solar-powered borehole,” he said. “We also anticipate to grow the area to include bee keeping and aqua farming. We have already engaged development partners to work together to fulfil that vision.”

Mr Majaya said the creation of nutritional gardens will help reduce pressure on Hunyani River, as some villagers are practising stream bank cultivation.

“We want people to desist from stream bank cultivation as this is causing siltation on our rivers,” he said. “These gardens will also help to address the human-wildlife conflict which has resulted in unnecessary loss of lives. We have cases of people who were attacked by crocodiles and hippopotamus while trying to access water from Hunyani River and this should stop. There are a lot of wild animals here and we should learn to co-exist with them.”