By Professor Sheunesu Mpepereki

IN our new circumstances we have upcoming farmers and businessmen who need to be brought up by the hand as it were.
We must accept this and invest in grooming and guiding our 400 000 staunch farmers of tomorrow.
All must accept to do business in new ways.
Innovation is not written in the university and school textbooks.
They say the most important element for success is political will.
We could use a lot of that here in Zimbabwe!
We must as a nation be willing to take our destiny into our hands and move our nation forward.
The West has plundered and impoverished us; their systems still permeate our economy and social fabric.
That mere fact is not an excuse for doing nothing to break out of our economic bonds.
Yes yesterday we took up arms and liberated ourselves.
Yesterday we picked the courage to repossess our soil; we kicked out the settler colonial white farmers from our land.
That is the stuff that Zimbabweans are made of; we know of no other.
Yes there are ‘softies’ who continually mourn that we cannot make it without engaging the West!
Yes we must engage the West just as we are engaging the East, but on our terms.
Who rides to Zimbabwe?
The Westerners in search of greener pastures, our pastures!
Let us use our resources to finance our development.
Agriculture is key to defending our sovereignty.
Mobilise, train and equip the troops, the farmers on the ground.
We challenge our brothers and sisters in the banking sector to fight for Zimbabwe!
Let us collectively, Government, public and private sector work to develop new systems that will work for us and not for our erstwhile colonisers and exploiters.
Let the crop or livestock that is being funded act as the collateral.
Can livestock and agricultural equipment be used as collateral?
Maybe, but massive impoverishment has already occurred especially in cotton growing areas of Zimbabwe where contractors have moved in to recover loans.
It is amazing that Zimbabweans think that they can do their agricultural finance using the Rhodesian model?
It cannot work.
We are not Rhodesians.
We do not as a population have the same resource base as the former white Rhodesian farmers.
Our skills base is way different.
We cannot run before we can crawl and walk.
That is not an excuse for laziness!
Government and the people of Zimbabwe must accept the reality of our circumstances and start from that baseline.
Yes we have a few experienced farmers.
We have lost many of our experienced extension specialists and farm workers to disease and the lure of the greener pastures.
We must take a leaf out of the health sector.
We must train more agricultural extension specialists.
We must divest ourselves of the elitist notion that every officer must have a degree!
Degrees do not grow food unless those who earned them have the proper orientation towards work!
And in Zimbabwe if you are educated, you are not supposed to dig the ground, that is the sorry fate of the uneducated.
And so as we hit the 92 percent literacy rate one must begin to wonder how many Zimbabweans are still left to work in the fields?
Your education is supposed to enable you to fit into society.
Unfortunately for Zimbabwe, education makes us less and less fitted to our African environment.
The more educated we are the less respect we have for the dignity of labour. MaDzimbabwe muchadya izvozvo!
Zvipi?
We are still talking agriculture, who will produce the food for us?
These are fundamental questions, way beyond obtaining an agricultural loan.
The learned do not work!
University graduates expect to buy a Mercedes Benz within the first year of work.
No contribution to creating wealth and growing the economy.
Todini?
Go back to work Zimbabwe!
Till the land, grow food.
There is a market for soyabeans, groundnuts, cowpea, mhunga, mapfunde and of course maize.
You do not have inputs; so what do you do, die?
Those with livestock should use the traditional fertiliser, (manure).
You have no money for seed?
Use retained seed (mbeu yomudura).
Recently I mentioned to some senior government officials that I had produced cowpea (nyemba) at my farm and fetched a good price on the local market. One of the officials asked, “Did you get the seed at the University?”
When I replied that I had got the seed from Mbare Musika market he immediately lost interest.
I meet many educated Zimbabweans who worry that Zimbabwe is being left behind technology wise.
The people in the village are worried about where to find some meal to cook sadza and vegetables for relish.
Isn’t there a disconnect somewhere?
Shouldn’t we all be working to raise agricultural productivity right from the base?
We, the educated (in what?) are rushing forward, leaving the people behind.
The people are asking “Ko iko makambofundeyiko zvatiri kungotambura kudai? “Taiti madzoka kuchikoro muchauya neruzivo nenjere kutiburitsa munzara neurombo!
“Zvino hatichakuwonii; mavakungotaurirana nechirungu kumusoro ikoko.
“Mari yedu yechikoro chokwadi yakainda mahara!”
If you dispute this discourse, stand up and be counted.
Or do you think there are some special ones who will come and rescue the situation.
Maybe Government!
Who exactly is Government?
Hausiri iwe?
Yes, there are many new technologies on the shelves.
What Zimbabwe needs are people who walk on the ground and make things happen.
Some will scoff at use of ‘mbeu yemudura’.
Seed companies have done an excellent job to convince farmers that only certified seed must be planted.
This serves the company’s commercial interests and is fine when things are normal.
The truth is such certified hybrid seed may not be available in many places.
Locally available seeds must continue to be used.
This diversity of germplasm is our only natural insurance against monopolistic practices by international seed houses that would see farmers buying and planting hybrid seed and being held to ransom as the political and other climates around the globe change.
Food insecurity, a major threat to our sovereignty!