By Christopher Makaza

Mashonaland West Agritex Chief Agronomist, Siena Makaza has revealed that Agritex is fully prepared for the 2019/2020 farming season with Agricultural extension workers currently conducting various meetings with farmers.

Speaking to Zifm this afternoon, Mrs Makaza said Agricultural extension plays a central role in promoting productivity and ultimately food security and livelihoods through educating farmers on Good Agronomic Practices (GAPs).

“Our extension workers based at ward level are currently having pre planting meetings with farmers. These meetings help the farmers to get enough information or timely information on good agricultural practices to be done for crops that they will be growing, for example if we are talking about maize, they will be refreshing on the correct time of planting, fertilizer application that is required, weed control and chemicals needed among other issues.

“Because of climate change, we have tasked our extension officers to encourage farmers to grow traditional small grains like the sorghum, rapoko and the millet. We prefer these crops mainly because of their tolerance to hash weather conditions. Remember we are all facing climate change and agriculture is equally affected,” she said.

Mrs Makaza said the country was experiencing short growing periods, mid-season dry spells and harsh weather conditions like hailstorms and strong winds, therefore farmers need to consider growing such crops because of their tolerance to these harsh weather conditions or even to lower rainfall rations. Besides their adaptability to dry weather conditions, Mrs Makaza said the small grains also have high nutritional value.

Mrs Makaza noted that most farmers in the province have already started preparing their land for the farming season and those who do conventional tillage are, however, facing challenges of fuel and the cost seems to be too high for them. However, efforts are being done by these farmers so that they get prepared for the season in time.

“There are also other programmes going on in the province that will be helping farmers accessing inputs. We have the Command Agriculture now called Smart Agriculture that is going on.  We have been doing it as agritex alone in the previous years for maize and soya. This season we have taken aboard the banks so that they monitor the debt for the farmers who should first register and get contracted with Agritex and then also contracted with the banks and be given inputs according to their contracts.

There is also the Presidential Input Support Scheme which is also giving free inputs to farmers especially in rural areas, we are also involved in assisting farmers to access and make proper use of the inputs.