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Chronicle Reporter

THE Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Dr Anxious Masuka has said Government is rehabilitating vandalised infrastructure on farms and so far 45 000 hectares on properties countrywide have been assessed.

Responding to questions in parliament last week, the Minister said Government has plans to operationalise 350 000 hectares of land in three years.

He said treasury has already been approached to release funds to rehabilitate some of the farms.

“We need a total of 350 000 hectares to climate proof our agriculture into the future so that we can produce sufficiently to meet our annual national needs.   Specifically for the vandalised infrastructure – we have done an assessment.  We have assessed 45 000 hectares on A1 and A2 farms requiring rehabilitation, ” said the Minister.

“We have included this in the accelerated irrigation rehabilitation plan and just last week, the first 21 000 hectares have been identified and submitted to Treasury for funding.  My expectation therefore, is that we will be able to see an acceleration of the rehabilitation of the farm infrastructure to enable the irrigation to commence.”

He said Government has a plan to put 350 000 hectares of land under irrigation in the next three years.

Minister Masuka said the plan is anchored on utilising 10 000 dams throughout the country.

He said Government is developing a master plan at Tokwe-Mukorsi Dam in Masvingo.

The Minister said there is an inter-ministérial committee that is looking at 12 projects from fishing, boating, higher and tertiary education, tourism, small and medium enterprises and agriculture in that area.

“So, that is about 95 percent complete but the purpose of establishing the Tokwe-Mukorsi was bigger than that. It was for irrigation and the irrigation takes place 80 km away downstream of Tokwe-Mukorsi where we have identified 40 000 hectares in Mwenezi District.  The rest of the hectarage is in Chiredzi District,” he said.

“The Chiredzi identification is already on existing A2 and other communal areas that is largely now taken up.  We, envisage however, that within Mwenezi, there will be a standard development and some defined hectarage being made available for prospective investors for which we invite Zimbabwean companies to participate.  We also anticipate that in that process, the activities around Tokwe-Mukorsi will then also be available for interested Zimbabweans to invest.  So it is something that we are working on and we are nearing completion and there will a public statement in that regard.”