Financial Gazette (Harare)
27 September 2008
Harare — THE central bank yesterday officially handed over farm equipment worth millions of dollars to a high-level resource mobilisation committee for distribution to farmers as the lender of the last resort bolster efforts to combat critical food shortages plaguing the country.
Gideon Gono, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, said the committee had a target to put at least 500 000 hectares under different crops this season.
"As indicated before, this programme will go to 2010 and beyond until every farmer is adequately equipped and everyone interested in farming has benefited," he said.
Yesterday, the committee was handed over 20 combine harvesters, 20 combine heads, 100 tractors, 10 disc harrows, 400 generators, 50 fertilizer spreads, 750 motorcycles, 150 grinding mills, 4 000 animal drawn cultivators, 400 animal drawn ploughs, 1 000 animal drawn cultivators, 7000 farm carts, 50 animal drawn planters, 50 000 trek chains and 17 000 knapsack sprayers.
"Given the reality that we are facing on the eve of the rainy season, it has become paramount that all the equipment procured to date be deployed into the fields to give effect to the 500 000 hectare food production (that we are targeting)," said Gono.
The disbursement of farm equipment is being undertaken against the backdrop of declining agricultural production, which government critics blame o the chaotic land reform programme under which commercial farms were redistributed from the minority whites to inexperienced landless blacks.
So far, the RBZ has successfully completed three phases of the farm mechanisation programme.
A total of 105 combine harvesters, 3 000 tractors, 1 846 ploughs, 500 planters, 746 chemical sprayers, 600 fertilizer spreads, 210 hay bailers, 1 00 000 ploughs, 130 harrows, 2 000 planters, 46 200 cultivators, 78 000 farm carts, 92 000 knap sacks and 200 000 chains have been disbursed under Phases 1, 2 and 3.
Misheck Sibanda, the chief secretary to the President and Cabinet said government had also imported seed, currently in short supply.
"In two weeks time all the required seeds will be in the country and will be distributed accordingly," he said.
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