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By Tendai Guvamombe.

Harare, Zimbabwe. (News of The South) – Agriculture is only a term that have since found burial in the sands of yesteryear but due to forces of change attributed to the tenacity of windy velocity the remnants are gradually unearthing to the surface disguised under new terminology.

Agribusiness is increasingly fast becoming centre of epitome in providing poverty stricken generality of Zimbabweans with ideal sustainable empowerment strategies.

Areas of empowerment has of late remained critical towards implementation of socio-economic policy measures with an ideal perspective to move towards poverty reduction in line with Sustainable Development Goal Agendas(SDGs).

In this view the unemployment wave continues to overlap future employment propspects for many urban dwellers thereby posing real dangers of a sporadic culture of poverty some have resorted to spare a moment of self-sustenance by venturing into what became known as agribusiness in the context of urban setup.

Harvest Polutry Group (HPG), largely comprising of man and women counting to an approximate number of 150 from high density suburbs of Glenorah, Budiriro among others successfully embraced Urban Farming through thier Livestock Production Hub which the found 3 years ago.

The group which is endowed with diversified livestock activities have so far managed to strike positive strides in providing group members with a ready market for thier products.

According to Oliver Mativenga HPG founding member, bringing poultry, pigary, fishery within the proximity of the City of Harare is the best thing ever as thier strategy enables them to retain more than they can afford to loose due the nature of their clientele base and stock feeds supplies.

“ Since everything is now centralized in the city we decided to also centralize all our agribusiness activities in the town which may include piggery, fishery, rabbits stocking, poultry among other activities and so that we get to meet our potential clients on daily basis and this will on the other hand this help reduce transport costs expenses as we are also closer to our stock feeds suppliers.”

The concept of bringing livestock production to the city which is the market place is increasingly becoming a centre of refugee for many jobless urban dwellers who once scrambled for quills production but are now adopting a diversified form of activities in the likes of building fishpound to lessen the burden of traveling to Kariba and keeping traditional chicks inorder to prepare for a diversified market.
The 30 year old Mativenga is a holder of Accounting Science degree is so passionate in taking agribusiness as his lifetime profession believes is worried most by his failure to aquire land which they as a group applied for the past 3 years to broaden thier agribusiness activities but to no avail.

“ Most of our poultry businesses are stationed at backyards which is one thing limiting our expansion growth such that we end up losing clients because of that. For interest sake we are in dire need of land in order to broaden our agricultural activities and we believe as a group farming is our only source of empowerment we can ever have. We have approached the office of Mash East Resident minister Zverengwi and were promised to get land which we are still impimpatiently waiting.”

Tsitsi Manika a founding member in the advisory committee of HPFG chanted similar sentiments saying their group is endowed with farming machinery in the likes of incubators, stock feeds millers, traitors but feels they have been incapacitated with land saying she prefers to get one either along Beatreace or Goromonzi inorder to stay close to thier clients.

“ We have both human capital and resources which include stock feeds millers, incubators, tractors but we do not have land and this has been the only remaining aspect in our business, probably if we can get land either in Goromonzi or Beatreace close to our customers would also save rent expanses which are currently a burden to us.“
It is most probable that majority of rural areas were not blessed with adequate rains this year hence the quest to sustain cities with food security now remain in the hands of urban farmers.

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