The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, and Rural Resettlement has pledged to push for more government support towards the Department of Agricultural Technical and Extension Services (Agritex) ahead of the next cropping season (2025-2026) following recent revelations of staff shortages and incapacitation of officers.
This comes ahead of the imminent 2024/2025 cropping season when the government is at the advanced stage of implementing the countrywide conservation farming programme, spearheaded by agritex officers across the country’s 1,500 rural wards.
The portfolio committee chairperson, Felix Maburutse, said his oversight committee would push the government to improve the number of agritex officers deployed across Zimbabwe.
“We will definitely push for that: to improve on the numbers (of Agritex officers),” said Maburutse.
“But as far as I am concerned, as far as I know, we have plenty of Agritex officers all over. Maybe it’s about deployment. We will keep our eyes on it.”
Maburutse said his committee will also push the executive arm of the government to ensure Agritex officers who are at the centre of farming activities in rural areas are better supported to execute their duties.
“I believe every agritex officer has a motorbike and we will be pushing the Ministry (of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, and Rural Resettlement) to ensure they are always mobile,” he said.
“As you understand our duty is oversight, and that’s exactly what we are doing.”
Agritex national director Stancilae Tapererwa has said efforts were being made to capacitate agriculture extension officers with motorcycles, fuel, and tablets for data collection.
But the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Professor Obert Jiri appeared not convinced that the country has a shortage of agritex officers.
“It depends on the number of farmers serviced by the officer,” he argued, adding the issue of capacitation of agritex workers falls under their employer – the Public Service Commission.
Investigations by CITE last month established the country has a shortage of agritex officers in some remote districts. For example, a district like Binga, which has 25 wards, only has 50 agritex officers, which is two-thirds of the minimum required number.
According to the establishment, there should be at least three Agritex officers per ward.
Agritex workers play a key role in Zimbabwe’s farming value chain, in equipping smallholder farmers with the knowledge and guidance required to improve productivity. However, due to several challenges facing the Department of Agritex housed in the Ministry of Agriculture, extension workers are not fulfilling their roles as per the public’s expectations.
Agritex officers are poorly remunerated and experience limited operational resources like transport to reach farmers, lack of appropriate technology, and in-service training for agriculture practices such as agroecology which are alternatives to addressing food insecurity because of climate change.
Research has also shown that the development needs of smallholder farmers have often been overlooked during the delivery of agricultural information due to a lack of curriculum reform and gaps between agricultural extension officers’ training and farmers’ changing needs.
In 2020 the government gave the Department of Agritex the green light to recruit over 120 extension officers to fill vacancies in Matabeleland North and South provinces after staff shortages hampered the distribution of inputs for the cropping season under the climate-proofed Presidential Inputs Scheme.
However, that was not enough with the Department further requesting approval to employ more officers on top of the over 120 initially approved.
Maburutse said the portfolio committee had been closely following the government’s conservation farming programme across the country’s provinces, adding they were communicating with farmers as part of tracking progress.
Popularly known as Pfumvudza/Intwasa in local languages, conservation farming refers to an agriculture concept involving a crop production intensification approach under which farmers ensure the efficient use of resources on a small area of land to optimise its management.
The government last week launched the national programme in Buhera, Manicaland Province, marking the distribution of the inputs to beneficiaries of the scheme, which the powers-that-be believe will help circumvent the effects of climate change and boost crop yields for smallholder farmers.
The Meteorological Services Department (MSD) has already predicted normal to above-normal rains in the already looming 2024/2025 cropping season.
Matabeleland North Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister, Richard Moyo, is set to launch the province’s conservation farming scheme on Friday in Bubi District.
“On the day, we shall present inputs to farmers who have already done the prerequisite three plots as we prepare for the upcoming farming season,” said Matabeleland North Agricultural and Rural Development Advisory Services acting provincial director, Thulani Ndlovu.
Binga District Agritex officer, Pedias Midzi Ndlovu said farmers in the drought-prone district formed groups of 10 to 15 to help one another dig up holes in their plots in preparation for the upcoming cropping season.
Under the programme, Ndlovu said, a smallholder farmer must prepare between three to five plots measuring 16×34 metres and can only receive seed from the government after preparing at least three.
He elaborated that some farmers have since prepared their three plots adding each plot has 52 lines to cater for 52 weeks within a year.
Each line, he said will give a farmer 28 cobs of maize which is equivalent to a bucket of maize, adding one plot should give a farmer 52 buckets to cater for the whole year. The small plot, according to the district agritex officer, does not require a farmer to labour much with the weeding but can give them food enough for the whole year on the assumption that a bucket of grain is enough to feed an average family of five in a week.
While the government is downplaying the agritex officers’ deficit insisting that the country has enough of them statistical evidence on the ground has shown otherwise and what is obtaining in Binga which has just two-thirds of the minimum required number, could be the tip of the iceberg.
This story is published under the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe Investigative Journalism Fund with support from Action Aid Zimbabwe under the Partnership for Social Accountability Program.
