(HERALD) Farmers should start land preps
Farmers should start land prepsAS this year’s cropping season fast approaches, Zimbabwe should gear up to produce enough food to meet domestic demand by ensuring that the requisite preparations are made. With meteorologists projecting high chances of normal to above normal rainfall throughout the country for the 2007/08 season, all farms should gird up for the task at hand.
This, therefore, requires everyone to expeditiously mobilise the factors of production if we are to have a successful season. Specific areas that need urgent attention include finance, land preparation, seed, chemical and fertilizer procurement.
Although previous seasons brought waves of optimism that production would be high, this has always been affected by droughts. Droughts have been the driving force behind low production, though inadequate planning compounded the effects of aridity.
This is now time for farmers to start land preparations.
Farmers should also begin stocking all the necessary inputs instead of waiting until the last minute.
Zimbabwe is in the middle of its agricultural revolution and all our energies should be directed at ensuring full production on the farms.
Going by the Met Office forecast that the coming season should bring more rains, we all have an obligation to shame critics of our historic land redistribution exercise. The success of the programme depends on productivity.
During past seasons, some farmers complained that they were unable to plant early enough because of delays in getting the necessary inputs.
Farmers can overcome this by buying inputs early instead of waiting for the last minute, as mentioned earlier.
The failure by some of our farmers to do well even where conditions are favourable has also been attributed to lack of knowledge. The Government has spent a lot of money training Arex officers to guide newly resettled farmers. Chief among their duties is to show farmers what, when and where to grow.
Those farmers who disregard expert advice should do so only on condition that they use their own resources.
For proper planning to be successful, weather experts should be more willing to explain in layman’s language, even at the risk of losing precision, just what they are predicting and what they are not.
Farmers also need to know that the predictions are all probabilities. They don’t tell us whether it will rain on any particular day, or whether there will be one of those dreadful breaks in rainfall.
What is important is for the farmers to take rainfall forecasts as a guide in their land preparations.
At the same time the climate experts need to be ready to update and refine their probabilities more often.
Labels: FARMERS, THE HERALD, ZIMBABWE
posted by MrK @ 6:05 AM
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