Conservation farming offers new hope, but …

After a decade of failed harvests due to a combination of factors, which include poor rains, lack of inputs and a cocktail of socio-economic problems that have militated against many rural farmers’ efforts to feed themselves, any promise of new hope generates intense enthusiasm in the communal areas.
It is against this background that the Mutape brothers who practice subsistence farming in Mutoko were overwhelmed by the news that the Agricultural and Technical Extension (Agritex) services would help improve their yields through conservation farming.
With guidance from Agritex they each dug 4 000 troughs that were 15cm deep and 15cm wide on 2 500 square metre plots as word quickly spread across Mudzi District that those who embraced conservation farming would be given free seed.
“On this plot I will plant maize only and if what the Agritex officer tells me is true I expect to harvest at least eight (50kg) bags,” said Ndaizivei Nyarugwe from Mudzi’s Dakate Village, as sweat trickled down her cheeks.
For three days Nyarugwe and her three children worked up to the crack of dawn to prepare for planting a piece of land that had been left fallow for many years.
The troughs were partially filled with cow dung collected from their small cattle pen.
These efforts were duplicated across five of Zimbabwe’s districts of Mudzi, Mutoko, Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe, Rushinga, and Mbire where the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is promoting a Zimbabwe government initiative that seeks to increase food production in the country’s marginal areas.
Jean-Pierre Nereya-bagabo, economic and food security coordinator with the ICRC regional delegation for Southern Africa said:
“We chose to support government efforts in these marginal areas because last year’s food assessment indicated that the food situation there was very bad. After our food assessments in March 2009 we then decided that conservation farming is the only way that can effectively increase agricultural production.”
According to independent research, if properly implemented, conservation farming has the potential of quadrupling yields with farmers being able to harvest at least 1 500kg of maize per hectare.
Between June and July last year the humanitarian mission trained 67 Agritex officers including supervisors who have since then been spreading the conservation farming gospel in the five districts straddling the country’s perched natural regions Four and Five where rainfall usually ranges from below normal to poor.
Training included field selection, field preparation, planting, thinning, weeding, fertilizer top dressing and plant protection.
The extension workers then trained lead farmers and other interested individuals in their areas and the concept has been spreading like a wild fire since then.
“The response was overwhelming.
“The enthusiasm of the extension workers was beyond our wildest imagination,” said Nereyabagabo whose organisation is targeting to reach at least 20 percent of 12 700 vulnerable families in the five districts.
While the ICRC is targeting only the most vulnerable, through a selection process that ranks potential beneficiaries using the number and type of livestock one possesses, its food and seed pack distribution exercise has raised hopes of many other farmers like the Mutape brothers who unfortunately have to find their own inputs for the conservation farming programme.
For most of these farmers who will not qualify for the non-governmental organisation’s seed and fertiliser handouts they may fail to harvest enough to feed their families to the next harvest in 2011.
And with the government’s own input scheme requiring that the communal farmers pledge their livestock as collateral to receive the inputs, zeal is slowly waning into despair as yet another poor harvest looms.