Maravi

(HERALD) Give black farmers a chance

Give black farmers a chance

EDITOR — I hear a lot of people passing all sorts of negative comments about newly-resettled farmers who got land under the land reform programme.

Fine, I understand that some of us might not be on the farms allocated to us by the Government for some reason, but the black farmer must be given a chance to prove him/herself.

I will agree that those farms that are lying idle should be reallocated, but for those who have not been doing well technically, they must be assisted the same way the white former commercial farmers were getting support from commercial banks.

I would like to thank the Government for realising that farmers need to determine their own prices for the crops they produce.

This is laudable because farmers are just like any other businesspeople who should be left to do their own independent accounts of their business.

Since we got land under the land reform programme, we never got any assistance from many of these commercial banks.

Were it not for Government programmes through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, I do not know how else we could have managed.

The Farm Mechanisation Programme was a just, noble and worthy intervention.

The black farmer must not be put under pressure unnecessarily because we have many listed and private companies who actually deliberately switched off machinery and closed shop to abet Western interests bent on sabotaging the Government for daring to give land to indigenous Zimbabweans.

If no pressure is being put on these companies to reopen, then why shove the black farmer to just produce when they are willing but with no one to support them with inputs?

Why would we wait for the central bank to come in through quasi-fiscal assistance when we wanted the black farmer to produce?

Long live black farmers! Long live Zimbabwe!

Cde Jairos Tapfuma.
Marondera.

Labels: FARMERS, MECHANISATION

posted by MrK @ 4:30 AM