HomeOld_PostsAgriculture: Zim’s economic solution …understanding weather patterns key

Agriculture: Zim’s economic solution …understanding weather patterns key

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By Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu

THE possibility of plentiful rain coming late in the season in Zimbabwe is extremely slim, if not non-existent, because Zimbabwe’s rain and that of most of the Southern African region (SAR) is determined by a meteorological phenomenon called the Inter–Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). 

This rainy zone is created by an inter-relationship between atmospheric wind patterns and Atlantic Ocean currents near the African continent when air-bearing moisture that has evaporated from the ocean is sucked into a low pressure zone of that phenomenon, is then lifted into the colder regions of the atmosphere where it condenses and falls as rain. 

The zone shifts northwards as the earth moves and with it goes the rain, leaving Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Lesotho without much rain – creating factors to talk about and understand. 

The ITCZ is to this region what the monsoon is to south Asia. 

For its part Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland, Masvingo the Manicaland rain-shadow region mean average is some 400 -750mm, a factor that makes the region suitable for drought-resistant crops such as sorghum and millet, but certainly not maize. 

Meanwhile, as the world’s population increases daily, and a large number of people settles in urban areas where it engages in various industries other than food production, shortage of food not only in Zimbabwe but worldwide is bound to occur sooner than later. 

Other factors contributing to that inevitable looming global food shortage are: 

  • the world’s uncontrolled population increase most of which in urban and not rural areas where the bulk of world’s food supplies are actually produced
  • climate change with its negative effects on both agri – and aquaculture
  • encroaching desertification some of whose effects are noticed even in countries that are not contiguous with any desert 
  • less rainfall more or less from season to season, resulting in droughts and less and less agricultural yields. 

Zimbabwe has experienced such droughts in the past 30 years, a development that has caused many of its people to move to various urban and peri–urban centres, some of whom to such neighbouring countries as Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa to look for menial labour just to keep body and soul together. 

We are currently in a month when much rain should have normally fallen in most Zimbabwean regions. 

Vast areas of Zimbabwe have not received what we can correctly describe as adequate seasonal rain, not even enough to keep local flora and fauna alive until the following rainy season. 

By world standards, it is not enough for massive agricultural crop production such as is the case in some South American nations. 

Some Zimbabwean regions may have fairly good soils that need only adequate moisture to be agriculturally productive. 

Such soils need minimum watering such as was used by H. W Campbell in his ‘Dry Farming’ experiments in South Dakota (US) in the 1930s. 

The experiments were so successful that he produced tonnes of millet, wheat, beans sorghum, potatoes, sugar and a variety of other crops every season. 

He was subsequently hired by local and regional companies to improve their yields in various US regions where little rainfall renders crop farming a risk. 

Since then, Campbell’s methods have been tried and found to be most productive in many parts of the world, including Israel and Australia. 

The process comprises the following steps: 

  •   Plough deep, about 15 centimetres to enable every drop of rain to sink; 
  • Cultivate your field well to remove every weed so that your crops do not compete for the little rain and air with λ Plough immediately after the very first rains never mind how little it is. The most important thing is to turn over the wet soil and keep the little moisture from evaporating. 
  • Keep cultivating your field to enable every little shower to percolate through the soil. Cultivation breaks the soil and turns some of it into dust. Research has found that dust is a good means of mulching as it blocks the soil’s capillaries through which moisture evaporates.  
  •   It is advisable to leave the field to lie fallow after a year or two as that helps to restore the soil’s fertility. However, there is no need to do so if animal manure or chemical fertiliser is plentiful and is applied yearly. 

However, red, (sabasi, isibomvu) and loam (Igusu guswi) soils do not require manure. 

All they need is to keep some moisture in the soil. 

‘Dry Farming’ can be a very useful tool in poverty alleviation as it can produce a little more crops than the family requires for its own consumption. 

Sorghum, beans, peas and potatoes can be stored for reasonably long periods. 

One of the duties of Government extension officers is to train communities construction of storage facilities for various types of produce. 

Surpluses of whatever type should be collected for sale from the community by a recognised legal representative of a registered organisation or business. 

It would be uneconomical to tell producers of agricultural goods to take their tonnes of maize to the nearest Grain Marketing Board (GMB). 

Exceptions are perishables such as tomatoes, water melons and various fruits that usually flood markets. However, a community that produces fairly large quantities of various types of agricultural commodities would be advised to establish a local market centre, or operate a big transport company to take their goods to their market. 

Poverty eradication, or even alleviation, cannot be achieved by an agricultural community whose commodities have no market. 

Another responsibility for extension officers is to identify either actual, or at least potential markets for local agricultural commodities. 

Extension officers give technical knowhow, marketing guidance, commercial advice to agriculturists, cultural issues such as whether or not it would be advisable to establish a piggery project in a locality. 

Some communities will have nothing to do with pigs, that is from the rearing of those animals to the consumption of their flesh; some tribes will not touch a sheep, not even with a 10-metre-long pole. 

The degree of Government involvement in national poverty eradication programmes depends on whether it has adopted a retreating or an activist’s economic development policy. 

The retreating policy is that in which the State stands more or less aloof and lets private companies dominate the economic scene. 

The activist economic policy calls for Government intervention wherever and whenever an opportunity occurs. 

In Zimbabwe today, devolution of power has placed the Government on the periphery of the national socio-economic stage. 

The agricultural sector can take advantage of that situation by producing whatever is possible, and market it wherever, particularly in Zimbabwe itself, in SADC in Africa and in Asia. 

In agriculture lies Zimbabwe’s economic solution. 

Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email: sgwakuba@gmail.com

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