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Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau
TOPPICK Investments has embarked on a massive citrus production at its Zhovhe Farm in Beitbridge, which will see the organisation planting 277 000 orange trees in the next three years.

Chief executive officer, Mr Danisa Moyo said last Friday they had since constructed a pipeline from Zhovhe Dam to the farm to guarantee adequate water supplies.

He was speaking during a tour of the highly-integrated farm by Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement Minister, Dr Anxious Masuka.

Mr Moyo said they were importing citrus propagating material in batches from South Africa.

“We have completed constructing a pipeline from Zhovhe Dam to boost irrigation development and we have set our eyes on citrus production, which has high returns on both the local and export markets,” he said.

Mr Moyo said the citrus project will cover             1 000 hectares and the target is to plant 277 000 orange trees by 2023.

“Our target this year is to plant 88 000 trees and next year we intend to increase our annual target to 94 500 trees.

We will plant another                94 500 trees in 2023,” he said.

Mr Moyo said they were at the final stage of installing a micro-jet citrus irrigation system while planting of wheat, maize, soya bean, tomatoes and groundnuts in other sections of the farm was also underway.

Since starting operations around 2015, he said they had acquired 17 centre pivots to enable them to cultivate crops throughout the year.

“We expect to start getting returns from the citrus project in the next five years. Our bigger plan is to also set up a citrus park shed within the farm and to construct a 750 kilowatts solar plant to augment power supplies at the farm,” said Mr Moyo.

The farm has delivered 288 tonnes of wheat to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) and reserved 100 tonnes for milling flour at the processing plant.

The farm has also harvested 375 tonnes of maize from 75 hectares while in the last two seasons it delivered 1 500 tonnes of wheat and 875 tonnes of maize to GMB.

“In terms of livestock, we have 1 047 cattle, 453 goats and 571 sheep. On fisheries, we have assembled a complete fish hatchery.

“This is supported by 24 floating cages-each with a carrying capacity of 100 000 fish. At the moment five cages are stocked with 400 000 fish,” said Mr Moyo.

The business has more than 200 workers and most of them are locals. It expects to increase the staff complement once the citrus project gets off the ground. — @tupeyo