By Savious Madanhire
In response to the escalating El Nino drought-induced effects, the Zimbabwean government has unveiled a comprehensive plan to protect the country’s livestock population and support affected farmers.
The measures aim to reduce livestock mortality rates, support farmers’ incomes and ensure food security as Zimbabwe has faced severe droughts in recent years, resulting in livestock losses and economic hardship for farmers.
The programme was announced by the Agricultural Advisory and Rural Development Services acting chief director, Mr Leonard Munamati in an interview during a field tour for wheat at Insukamini Irrigation Scheme (Lower Gweru), encompasses several key strategies such as drilling of boreholes by ZIMWA, livestock feeding, veterinary services and livestock marketing.
“The government has identified the most affected wards in the whole country, there are 1620 rural wards in Zimbabwe and out of those we have picked about 1035 which we are saying are stressed and have cattle that are most at risk.”
“In each of those wards, we have come up with what we call Ward Drought Mitigation Centre hence at this place, we are establishing a Village Business Unit, water troughs, drilling a borehole and also feeding troughs, so that those affected cattle can come there.”
Munamati went on to urge farmers to visit these mitigatory centers and appreciate this programme so that they do not lose their livestock but benefit the supplementary feeding and save their livestock.
“We urge farmers to come there and market their livestock and currently we have identified farmers with excess hay bales so that the bales can be sold to those in need but as government, we have come up with programmes where we are contracting suppliers of supplementary feeding and currently, we have Dendairy here in the Midlands and they are currently supplying silage to Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, Masvingo and some parts of the Midlands where they is need hence all those programmes make sure we don’t lose our livestock.
“More importantly the wheat that we are harvesting, the wheat straws we need that to feed our livestock so we encourage farmers to do hay bales of those wheat straws and make sure that we provide them to the areas in need, hence the biggest issue now is to drill boreholes in those drought-stressed areas and we have redirected all the ZIMWA rigs to go to regions 4 and 5 and these are mostly in the Matabeleland Provinces, Masvingo, parts of the Midlands and parts of Manicaland to make sure they avail water for our livestock,” said Munamati.
However, even after the drought, the Ward Drought Mitigation Centres can be used to build government offices such as ward councilors’ offices, the ministry of youths amongst other
government offices.
The centers can be electrified and installed internet devices hence modernising our rural areas bringing government offices to them and empowering our communities.
