Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa was in a no show at a key agriculture
meeting and was instead represented by the Minister of State in his
office Clifford Sibanda.
There was heightened curiosity on whether Mnangagwa would
attend the meeting, following an alleged food poisoning incident about two
weeks ago.
Instead, Sibanda delivered the key note speech in
Mnangagwa’s absence, saying the government had introduced a new statutory
instrument to curb side-marketing of State-sponsored farm produce and abuse of
inputs provided under the command agriculture programme.
“Statutory Instrument 79 of 2017, the Agriculture Marketing
Authority (Command Agriculture Scheme for Domestic Crop, Livestock and
Fisheries Production) is in order and those, who take advantage of cash
challenges and entice farmers to side-market their produce at uncompetitive
prices will be dealt with accordingly,” Mnangagwa said in a speech read on his
behalf by Sibanda.
“As I speak, maize deliveries to the Grain Marketing Board
(GMB) depots have already surpassed half a million metric tonnes.
Deliveries are ongoing and some silos are already full and
maize is being moved to other GMB depots across the country.”
Mnangagwa said the government had expanded the command
agriculture initiative to include other crops such as wheat, cotton and soya
bean, in addition to fish and livestock production after the success of the
scheme, which was initially targeted at maize production.
“Of course, achieving this landmark development requires
the effort of every stakeholder in the agriculture sector and cannot be done by
government alone. This calls for support from all players in the value chain
system inclusive of the financial services sector, agro inputs producers and
equipment suppliers, as well as farmers themselves,” he said. newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment