EDITORIAL COMMENT: Ordinary people must get farming implements

More than 300,000 families have benefited from the government’s land reform programme since the launch of the fast-track land reform programme in 2000. The majority of the land reform programme beneficiaries are the once marginalised black people who are now proud owners of pieces of land in prime farming areas which used to be a preserve of the whites.

The government embarked on the land reform programme to correct the skewed land ownership which favoured the whites. Most blacks before independence were confined to barren land while the few whites were settled in fertile land across the country. What was however surprising was that despite cultivating the poor soils, the black farmers produced about 80 percent of the country’s food requirements.

The government soon after independence embarked on the land reform programme meant to correct the past imbalances in the ownership of this finite resource. The challenge facing government now is to empower the new farmers to enable them to use the land productively. The farmers should not just produce for national consumption but surplus for export so that the country can regain its status of being the breadbasket for the Southern Africa region.

The government’s empowerment programmes such as the farm mechanisation programme should therefore benefit the ordinary farmer. We totally agree with Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko that farming implements such as tractors should not just benefit people in leadership position. The Vice President who was addressing senior government officials and Zanu-PF leaders in Kwekwe on Wednesday, said it was sad to note that farming machinery such as tractors which was distributed by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe during Gideon Gono’s tenure as governor, benefited mostly bigwigs at the expense of ordinary people. He said government did not want a repeat of this, so all efforts should be directed at ensuring ordinary people benefit.

Vice President Mphoko said the thrust was to uplift the lives of ordinary people by empowering them through programmes such as farm mechanisation. He said the 400 tractors from Brazil should benefit A1 farmers so that they are able to boost production. The government should therefore put in place mechanisms to ensure transparency in the distribution of the farming equipment so that it reaches the intended beneficiaries.

We have in the past witnessed people without land being given tractors to park at their houses in town and this cannot be allowed to continue. The nation should benefit from the farm mechanisation programme through increased production on the land. Those who got land for speculative purposes should not benefit from the farm mechanisation programme because giving farming implements to such farmers is wasting resources.

Farmers, especially those allocated farms should start paying rentals and this is the only effective way to deal with those individuals who are not using land productively. Most of these farmers will be pained by paying rentals for idle land and will therefore be forced to surrender the land back to government for redistribution to committed farmers.

We want to implore Vice President Mphoko to see to it that farming implements meant for the ordinary people are directed to these people.

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