Prisons poised for bumper maize harvest

THE Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services will for the first time in many years attain food self-sufficiency after benefiting from the Government’s Command Agriculture programme with the organisation expecting to produce nearly 4 000 tonnes of maize this year.

ZPCS Commissioner-General Retired Major-General Paradzai Zimondi on Friday hailed the Command Agriculture programme which has made the country’s prisons and correctional services self-reliant in terms of the staple maize grain.

The revelation by Rtd Major-General Zimondi comes in the wake of unrelenting criticism of the Command Agriculture programme in some quarters particularly by Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo who has described the programme as “Command Ugly-culture’’.

Rtd Major-General Zimondi’s praise of the programme comes after President Mugabe also paid tribute to Command Agriculture for ensuring Zimbabwe is food self-sufficient. He recently describing the programme as ‘’beautiful’’.

Speaking on the sidelines of a weeklong ZPCS’ Officers Commanding,Of-ficers-in-Charge and Farm Managers indaba in Masvingo, Commissioner- General Zimondi said his organisation received extensive agricultural support under the Command Agriculture programme in the just-ended farming season.

‘’We are involved in the Command Agriculture programme and we had better maize yields in the just-ended farming season because of the tillage and inputs support that we got through the programme. We have the land, labour and expertise within our own organisation,’’ he said.

“I am happy to say that for the first time in many years, we managed to produce enough food in terms of the staple maize grain after a successful 2016-17 farming season having benefited from Command Agriculture.

“We can assure the nation that we will not be crybabies when it comes to food if we continue to get support under this programme,’’ he added.

Rtd Major-General Zimondi said ZPCS put 600 hectares under maize on the organisation’s farms dotted around the country after getting support under Command Agriculture.

He said maize and wheat yields on ZCPS’s farms countrywide could further improve if the institution received Command Agriculture support to venture into irrigation. At the moment, the organisation is producing most of its crop under dry-land farming.

‘’In the just-ended farming season, our average yield per hectare was five tonnes of maize but we can go further if we get help with irrigation equipment. We will have no food challenges if we are able to irrigate our crops,’’ said Rtd Major-General Zimondi.

Officially opening the indaba, Minister of State in Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s office Cde Clifford Sibanda also hailed Command Agriculture for engendering food self-sufficiency within the prisons and correctional services organisation and the nation at large.

Minister Sibanda said Zimbabwe was expecting over 2 million tonnes of maize this year thanks to Command Agriculture and the Presidential Well-Wishers Inputs Support Scheme.

He also hailed ZCPS for planning to expand into the Command Agriculture Livestock Scheme, which he said together with the ongoing efforts to revive the Cold Storage Commission by Government, would make Zimbabwe a major beef producer once again with lucrative export markets in the Middle and Far East regions.

This year, Zimbabwe is expecting a net food surplus with an anticipated harvest of more than 2 million tonnes of grain.