Zimbabwe looking to bounce-back as Africa’s breadbasket with a surplus harvest




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The implementation of the Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation Strategy is showing encouraging progress, with the Government indicating that Zimbabwe is likely to record a grain surplus for the first time in over two decades.

The Government’s Agricultural and Food Systems Strategy is set to smash records in its first year of implementation if the current weather patterns continue.

Farmers are equally confident that with government support programmes, the country is poised for a bumper harvest this summer cropping season.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, and Rural Resettlement, Dr. John Bhasera told Zbc News this Monday that wheat deliveries have already exceeded the set target with a 330 percent increase in deliveries.

“So far over 1,2 million hectares have been planted against a target of 1,5 million and obviously that means that we will manage to reach 2million metric tonnes of maize and other small grains.

In the wheat sector, deliveries are well over 210 000 tonnes against a national requirement of 330 metric tonnes, and that is a huge improvement,” he said.

With the country spending over 800 million dollars annually on maize and wheat imports, President Emmerson Mnangagwa launched the Agricultural Recovery Plan as well as the Agricultural and Food Systems Transformation Strategy whose twin objective is set to restore the country’s food security and create US$8,2 billion Agriculture value economy by the year 2023. – ZBC