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President Robert Mugabe

Land is a finite resource that should be shared by all Zimbabweans. The country, therefore, cannot afford the luxury of allowing individuals to keep it as a status symbol. Those who were allocated land should ensure that it is fully utilised or risk having it withdrawn.

President Mugabe said at the weekend that most A2 farmers were not using the land productively with many of them keeping land as a status symbol as opposed to farming. It is a fact that many of the farmers had nothing when they got the land but many of them have been on the land for more than ten years now.

Government has over the years been assisting farmers with inputs and many of them benefited from the government’s farm mechanisation programme. The serious farmer who wants to work on the land should have by now built adequate capacity to fully utilise the land. Those who took the land for speculative purposes or just to acquire a new status of being farm owners have obviously done nothing to build their capacity to utilise the land hence their land has been idle for years.

We totally agree with President Mugabe that the A2 farms should be audited as soon as possible so that those that are not using the land surrender the land to government for reallocation to other landless Zimbabweans who are ready to use the land.

Zimbabwe needs to be self-sufficient in food and this is only possible if every piece of land allocated to new farmers is fully utilised. Government on its part has covered a lot of ground in its bid to correct the skewed land ownership that favoured whites and the onus is now on those that benefited from the land reform programme to prove that they can put the land to good use.

A few blacks were allocated small-scale farms before independence but these had to prove to the settler regime that they had the requisite knowledge and capacity to utilise the land. This was a deliberate move by the successive colonial governments to ensure only a few blacks qualified to own land.

This bottleneck system was negative but what was positive was that farmers had to prove that they had the requisite farming skills and had a passion for farming. It might be necessary in future to screen land applicants based on their skills to ensure those that are allocated land have the relevant skills to enable them to full utilise the land.

We believe most A2 farmers should by now be able to adequately fund their farming activities as opposed to waiting for free inputs from government. Government should have long weaned these farmers who should take farming as a business.

The nation looks up to these farmers to provide adequate food to feed the people as well as create employment for our agriculture graduates from colleges and universities. The farms allocated to individuals in some cases are just too big with individuals getting farms as big as 2,000 hectares.

Government should move swiftly to reduce the sizes of these farms so that more Zimbabweans can benefit from the land reform programme.