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Government and its development partners have since independence been supporting farmers to boost production.
A number of schemes that include the Presidential Input Support Scheme, Command Agriculture and contract farming have been initiated to assist the farmers with farming inputs and other requirements.

Under Command Agriculture or National Enhanced Agriculture Productivity Scheme (NEAPS) farmers are supposed to pay back the loans advanced to them for buying inputs and meet other farming requirements.

It is therefore disturbing to learn that some farmers who benefited from NEAPS are evading repaying their loans through side marketing.

The farmers are supposed to sell their grain to the Grain Marketing Board but many are now side-marketing thereby jeopardising repayments to banks that are funding the various schemes.

Government has warned that farmers who have not cleared their debts will not receive support from the various farmers support schemes this coming cropping season.

It said those in arrears can only benefit if they make an immediate payment of 50 percent of the 2020/2021 summer season total loan amount or make arrangements to pay at least 80 percent by end of November.

The Government has also warned that the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement Dr Anxious Masuka can revoke offer letters to farmers who use them to the detriment of Government supported programmes.

Zimbabwe has demonstrated that it has the capacity to fund its own programmes to boost agricultural production as evidenced by the success of the last cropping season.

The country is expecting 2,8 million tonnes of maize to be delivered to the GMB this year after it introduced Intwasa/Pfumvudza and supported 1,8 million farmers with farming inputs and other requirements.

Government, we want to believe, has plugged loopholes that resulted in some pseudo farmers receiving inputs which they later sold on the black market.

We want at this juncture to urge all farmers yet to repay their loans to either pay immediately or make payment arrangements so that they continue benefiting from the farmer support schemes.

Government said it wants to establish a revolving fund from the loan repayments so that it can continue assisting farmers to boost production. We have said it before that farming should be a business and as such those advanced loans have an obligation to repay the loans within the agreed period like any other business.

Government cannot be expected to continue giving free inputs especially to those individuals allocated prime farming land in areas that used to be a preserve of white farmers. We want to once again implore loan defaulters to strive to clear their arrears before the onset of the rains so that they continue receiving financial support.