Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa who is spearheading the country’s command agriculture project says agriculture remains the bedrock of the country’s economy and the country should be self-sufficient in food within the next two years.
Responding to a question from Movement for Democratic Change vice-president Thokozani Khupe, Mnangagwa said the government was doing everything it could to support the agricultural sector that that it stops importing food regardless of whether there are rains or a drought.
“We have now put measures to make sure that there is food sufficiency in the country. We wish to accomplish this goal within the next four seasons. There are two seasons in a year, this means in two years’ time, we shall have accomplished that area,” he told Parliament on Wednesday.
The two years is expected to coincide with the 2018 elections which will be a crucial test for Mnangagwa and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front which has so far said it will be fielding President Robert Mugabe as its candidate.
Right now Mugabe is under pressure to step down because of the current economic problems the country is facing but his lieutenants say he should be allowed to finish his term.
Mnangagwa heads government business in Parliament and also heads the economic ministries in the government.
The government has embarked on a programme in which it intends to recruit 2 000 farmers to grow two million tonnes of maize on 400 000 hectares.
It is targeting farmers who can produce more than five tonnes a hectare and will taken those five tonnes leaving the farmers with the surplus.
Q & A
HON. KHUPE: Thank you very much Mr. Speaker Sir. My question is directed to the Leader of the House, Hon. Vice President Mnangagwa. In September 2015, world leaders gathered in New York and they came up with sustainable development goals which are a successor framework of the Millennium Development Goals. They made a declaration that they were going to transform the world and they also vowed that they were going to eliminate poverty by the year 2030. As Zimbabwe, what is it that we are doing or have done to make sure that there are monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to determine the impact and sustainability of the sustainable development goals if indeed we are to eliminate poverty by the year 2030.
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