Zimpapers Logo

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

After a 2023/24 season of shrunken bellies and grief-stricken faces, people in the Southern African development community can crack smiles at a recent hope-inspiring weather forecast that says that our country as well as other states in our SADC region will receive normal to above normal rainfall in the 2024/25 farming season, according to regional weather experts.

But be that as it may, farmers should not be swayed by the desire to grow more maize at the expense of traditional grains such as sorghum, pearl millet and rapoko which are known for their capacity to withstand droughts.

Maize, introduced to Africa from South America by Portuguese sailors searching for a sea route to India, became an instant hit on the market, searching for a more lucrative price than what was paid for traditional crops that the white grain literally drove into the shade as it were.

Unfortunately, however, maize is too vulnerable to drought so without the normal baskets of traditional food crops, Zimbabweans and other Africans hooked to maize have succumbed to hunger in recurrent drought stricken seasons caused by global warming.

Livestock have not been spared as many animals have died for lack of drinking water and green pastures, so that in Zimbabwe the government embarked on a countrywide borehole drilling programme to provide water for crop irrigation, livestock, as well as for domestic use.

The forecast for normal to above-normal rainfall for the 2024/25 farming season was given by meteorologists during the 29th Southern Africa Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF-29), held earlier this week.

Season projections

The exhortation by the weather experts to farmers in drier regions of Matabeleland and other parts of the country to plant traditional grains for their climatic conditions is a proviso in light of weather-degradation activities that continue in Africa as well as elsewhere in the global village, which exacerbate global warming and climate change in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the global village.

Implied in the paragraph above are veld fires in our country and elsewhere in SADC as well as smoke from unmodified factory chimneys and from coal mine plants, all of which exude toxic gases that erode the ozone layer created by God to protect Earth from the sun’s dangerous rays.

As a result of the ozone being rendered wafer-thin, Earth is then heated up with the result of perennial droughts such as those that we in Zimbabwe and elsewhere have experienced and also in cyclones such as Idai which hit Zimbabwe’s eastern parts causing damage to homes and other infrastructure.

Zimbabweans also need to be educated about the negative impact of wanton deforestation by people cutting trees for firewood to sell in urban centres for instance, in ignorance of the fact that trees absorb and sink toxic gases in smoke that would otherwise damage the ozone.

As everyone should also know, trees draw water from clouds, which is why deserts experience no rain because there are no trees.

So education remains an important tool for the enlightenment of people about the dos and don’ts that otherwise impinge on human lives.