The Sunday News
Munyaradzi Musiiwa, Features Reporter
THE country has a vision of becoming a middle-income economy by 2030 and President Mnangagwa has set a solid foundation to achieve this national objective by facilitating the enhancement of productivity in all sectors of the economy.
Agriculture has remained strategic in the country’s economic turnaround strategy as it has a potential to generate foreign currency through exports as well as averting hunger and alleviating poverty in the country which the President says it is the first port of call in the revitalisation of the economy.
The country has for the past two decades hit by perennial droughts emanating from dry spells, cyclones and climatic changes thereby relinquishing its status as the regional bread basket. The dire situation has been exacerbated by economic embargoes imposed on the country by its western adversaries as political retribution for reclaiming the land from former white settlers.
The country is however, slowly adapting to the new climatic conditions and deploying modern and sophisticated farming methods in an endeavour to ensure food security at household level and reduce the huge import bill which is emanating from grain imports among other food deficits.
In 2017, the country had a bumper harvest of in excess of 2.2 million metric tonnes of maize as a result of the Command Agriculture Programme which was implemented under the stewardship of President Mnangagwa who was the then Vice President.
The programme coincided with above average rains. However, the country experienced dry spells the following years as a result of hit waves that resulted in drought. The country started importing grain form other African countries which also came with various crop diseases and parasites. There has been little knowledge imparted to the farmer on the importance of modern farming methods such as soil testing.
Most beneficiaries of the land distribution programme have failed to meet the production exportations as they implemented their traditional farming methods that dissonated with the type of soils on the land they were settled.
Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water and Rural Resettlement permanent secretary Dr John Basera said among other production challenges, poor soils were limiting the potential to improve and boost crop productivity to desired levels.
Government set aside $30 million for soil testing to enhance agriculture productivity in the country and has since launched the Matabeleland South Soil Testing Laboratory.
Dr Basera said the era had come where farmers should make informed crop farming decisions that have a direct impact on profitability based on the knowledge on what was suitable for farming on the soils they have.
“Soil testing is a fundamental step for every farmer to make informed crop farming decisions that has a direct impact on profitability. Status of soils has a direct impact on crop productivity and food security at household and national level,” he said.
Dr Basera said smallholder farmers most in rural communities should embrace soil testing to know fertility levels of their soils.
“The major challenge faced by our smallholder farmers today is that our soils are now tired and sour, thus require “sweetening”. Most soils have low fertility to support production of most crops and have been exposed to chemicals and fertiliser use for many years and this has led to degraded soils with low pH. Soil acidity is the greatest soil fertility challenge that renders soils unproductive owing to low fertiliser use, unavailability of major nutrients (NPK) and direct damage to crops,” he said.
Government has since launched the Blitz Soil Conditioning Programme to promote the use of lime to moderate acidic soils.
“It is imperative to prioritise liming of acidic soils and to achieve this will require site-specific soil nutrient and pH analysis (pH is a measure of the hydrogen ion concentration of the water as ranked on a scale of 1.0 to 14.0. The lower the pH of water, the more acidic it is).
Unfortunately, many farmers do not have easy access to soil testing services. As government we have embarked on another ambitious target of testing soils countrywide for pH (acidity or alkalinity).
The programme is dubbed, Blitz Soil Conditioning Programme and is intended to promote the use of lime to sweeten acidic soils. This is clearly spelt out in the Agriculture Recovery Plan, where the Blitz Soil Conditioning Programme is expected to (1) create awareness of the need to “sweeten” the soils and decentralise the service and (2) ensure the service is affordable,” said Dr Basera.
Agricultural seed expert who is also Seedco Commercial Agronomist in charge of the Southern region Mr Ronnie Chigombe said soil testing would also assist farmers in understanding the type of crop and seed variety suitable for their land.
“Ideally high yield seed varieties require more water and usually irrigated farms. For instance seed maize varieties such as SC 727, SC 719, SC 659 and SC 529 for Seedco are most suitable for commercial farming because they are high yield seed varieties. They require irrigation.
As for the dry land farmers depending with each farmer’s agro ecological region they advised to plant from SC 301 , and a new variety SC 419 thus for those farmers in region four, SC513 , SC 529 , SC 555(New variety) for region three and four. Farmers in Region 1, 2, and parts of region 3 should prefer planting SC 727, SC 719, SC 659 and SC 649 under dry land,” he said.
The soil testing thrust by Government has completed the puzzle in the agriculture transformation drive which the President said it will enable the country to say “Bye, Bye” to hunger and food imports.
