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VP Emmerson Mnangagwa

Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
ZIMBABWE will take delivery of $6 million worth of farm machinery from Brazil in October, Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said.

Speaking at a Zanu-PF provincial coordinating committee meeting in Gweru last week, VP Mnangagwa said the shipment is the remainder of the first $38 million phase under Brazil’s More Food for Africa Programme.

Zimbabwe recently received $32 million worth of agricultural machinery from the emerging global economic power and one of the world’s most agriculturally advanced countries.

VP Mnangagwa said the government has already strategised on how targeted beneficiaries will access the agricultural implements after setting up eight strategic points from where the equipment will be distributed to selected groups of farmers.

He said under the programme, Brazil pledged to supply Zimbabwe with $ 98 million worth of farming implements in three phases.

“Under the first phase we were supposed to receive farming implements worth $38 million from Brazil. However, we’ve received equipment worth $32 million and we’re expecting the remaining $6 million to arrive by October this year. We’ve already set up eight strategic centres in each province from where the targeted groups of people will access the implements,” he said.

VP Mnangagwa said the farming implements will enhance agricultural productivity and ensure food security at household level as espoused under the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset).

He said some of the implements received in the first delivery are already being distributed.

VP Mnangagwa said the government had struck a deal with Egypt which will see the country supplying cotton, wheat and maize to the North African country through contract farming.

He said the government was in the process of identifying land that will be utilised for the project, which he said will transform the country’s agricultural sector.

Some of the places earmarked for the project, he said, are Kanyemba and Omay along the Zambezi Valley and 10,000 hectares of land in Mashonaland East.

He said under the agreement Egypt will supply seed, implements and other resources needed while Zimbabwe will provide land into the project.

“We’ll grow cotton, wheat and maize on behalf of Egypt. Egypt will supply all the resources, implements and inputs needed for the production of the crops and we’ll provide land. We’ll then sell them the produce at our own price,” he said.

VP Mnangagwa reiterated that dairy farms in the Midlands should be spared in the ongoing farm downsizing exercise saying reducing their sizes would be retrogressive to production and dairy farming will no longer be viable.

He said it was the government’s position that dairy farms should be spared to ensure that there is a boost in milk production.

“I was talking to Midlands Chief Lands Officer (Joseph) Shoko and his (Lands and Rural Resettlement) Minister Douglas Mombeshora that it’s prudent for the ministry to spare dairy farms so that they become viable. This was the agreement that we made in the first place. We hope that will be followed in the ongoing farm downsizing exercise,” he said.