Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-A local technocrat has ascribed Zimbabwe’s poor agricultural performance in the past agriculture season to more internal mechanisms such as policies and institutions other than the El Nino drought.
She contends that other Southern African countries which were similarly affected by the drought fared better.
Speaking at an Agriculture Policy Studies High Level Stakeholder Validation workshop Dr Jackqeline Mutambara a University of Zimbabwe Agriculture Economist cited the examples of Malawi, South Africa and Zambia among others which contributed to a regional maize average yield of 2.5mt/h against Zimbabwe’s 0.4mt/h.
“Southern Africa as a whole has experienced severely suppressed seasonal rainfall attributable to the El Nino episode in 2015/16 season (and) despite (these) unfavorable weather related factors, neighboring countries performed relatively well compared to Zimbabwe”.
“The poor performance in Zimbabwe relative to comparable regional countries with similar natural environment implies existance of problems in Zimbabwe’s internal mechanisms such as policies and institutions”.
“Furthermore, there is historical evidence of variations in the country’s performance in maize sector due to changing policies and institutions”, she said.
Mutambara also cited policy and institutional issues such as land uncertainties, lack of specialization in maize production, high input costs and technological backwardness and unstable maize marketing and trade policy as reasons weighing down increased productivity.
“Land administration ad governance post land reform has created uncertainty on the basic resource in agriculture”.
“Weaknesses in allocation, land tenure management, use regulations, valuation, information gaps, dispute/conflict resolution and management capacities”, she said.
Mutambara called for ministry of lands to provide secure and bankable titles to all new A1and A2 farmers and the strengthening of the same ministry’s capacity to govern land resource effectively.
Officially opening the workshop the Deputy Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Col. (Rtd) Katsande said government is working to revive the agriculture sector which underpins the livelihoods of about 70% of the Zimbabwean population.
“We want to resuscitate the maize sector so that we become the breadbasket of Southern Africa just as we have managed to do with tobacco”.
“We will address all the impediments that stand in the way of progress be they permits or else”, he promised.
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