Staff reporter
The Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Fisheries and Rural Development has urged winter wheat farmers to speed up their planting in order to get the best yields as well as to avoid encroachment into the next summer rains.
Secretary of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Fisheries and Rural Development Dr Obert Jiri emphasize that the Ministry has contracted 98 919ha out so far which is 82.4% of the targeted 120 000ha. He added that the deadline which was expected the wheat to have been planted was 15th of May which only resulted in 30 482ha being planted. Hence the date has been extended to the 31st of May.
“The Ministry is expecting to irrigate 141 000ha with the water left over after extensively irrigating the summer cropping due to the El Nino induced drought. Currently we are holding meetings with farmers in all districts encouraging them to grow wheat profitably,” said Dr Jiri.
Dr. Jiri emphasized that the Government is strategizing to provide ring-fenced electricity specifically for wheat farmers. This initiative aims to guarantee uninterrupted power supply throughout the planting season, which commenced in early April this year.
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“With regard to electricity, there is great improvement as opposed to in the past. Complaints are here and there in terms of faults but there is a great improvement on the provision of electricity,” he said.
Farmers were advised that ZINWA has enough water for irrigation. It has embarked on an exercise to register farmers irrigation capacity and align available water resources with the farming activities to optimize their utilization.
The improvement in hectarage put under wheat this season is informed by the Government’s interventions meant to increase output, in sync with the Agriculture Food Systems Transformation Strategy, the Agriculture Recovery
Government having pulled the strings to guarantee availability of inputs and uninterrupted power supply this season. Government has announced its planning price for the winter wheat as USD507.50/ mt, which is higher than the import price of USD437/mt.
