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Business Reporter
GOVERNMENT is scaling up efforts to close the mechanisation gap of 20 000 tractors by setting up the Mechanisation Development Alliance to stimulate the public and private sectors to grow mechanisation uptake in the country and ease drought power shortages.

The Mechanisation Development Alliance (MDA) is an all-stakeholder initiative for mechanising value chain actors that involve manufacturers, dealers, academia and the Government.

It provides a platform for deliberations on policy, commercial quality, innovation, research and development. The intervention will leverage the abilities of university innovation hubs to conjure up mechanised implements that address the dictates of modern farming for smallholder farmers, which will further push the rural agricultural transformation.

The Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, in its latest bi-monthly magazine, reports that as at November 2022, the private sector had proposed schemes for 5 000 tractor units and the Government another 3 337 tractors under the Belarus scheme.

“In order to raise efficiency of labour and enhance productivity, the Government is implementing unprecedented mechanisation schemes.

“In 2022 alone 1 641 tractors were distributed to farmers against a business as usual target of 800-900 tractors a year,” it said.

Last month, President Mnangagwa commissioned 1 635 tractors, 16 combine harvesters and other farming equipment under the US$66 million Belarus Phase 2 Mechanisation Facility.

The first phase of the facility saw the delivery of 474 tractors, 60 combine harvesters, 210 planters and five low-bed trucks.

President Mnangagwa

The Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC) now offers tillage services to farmers after receiving the first batch of 400 tractors from the Government in 2021.

“For the communal and smallholder sector, the Government launched the new paradigm that for production to move to the next level, from a Theory of Constraints perspective, the “hoe and the ox-drawn plough” are the biggest mechanical constraints militating against increased production and productivity,” said the ministry.

“In this regard, the mechanisation gap was determined to be 25 000 two-wheel tractors and the groundwork for closing this gap from 2023 has been laid.”

President Mnangagwa gets a feel of one of the tractors at the launch of the Belarus Mechanisation facility in Harare

Highlighting progress on irrigation, the ministry said in order to de-risk agriculture, President Mnangagwa announced an ambitious plan to irrigate 350 000ha by 2025 up from 171 000ha in 2020.

The area under irrigation has increased to over 187 471ha as at November 2022, it noted.

“The Government has formed the Irrigation Development Alliance, comprising all stakeholders and announced an ambitious plan to irrigate 350 000ha by 2025 up from 171 000ha in 2020”.

Last year various proposals for up to 100 000ha were submitted by the private sector and the Government has since directed the commercialisation of all smallholder irrigation schemes.

In 2022, a total of 304 irrigation schemes out of 450 schemes were commercialised against a target of 200.