Umzingwane farmers call for land surveys to resolve land disputes

UMZINGWANE Farmers Association has called for Government’s intervention through the facilitation of land surveys that will assist in alleviating land disputes arising among farmers.

The long-standing disputes which mostly involve issues like boundaries are said to be affecting the farming sector in the region. Umzingwane Farmers Association secretary for administration Mr Clarkson Matshiya said no surveys have been done for most of the farms.

“Most of our farmers are on A2 model which is commercial and A1 model and resettlement areas. No survey has been done for most of the farms which means those resettled farmers do not manage to work the way they want. Some of them do not know where their farm starts and ends, so we have a lot of land disputes among our farmers due to the boundary issues. We do hope that the issue does get resolved,” said Mr Matshiya.

He said they were ready to assist in whatever way they could so that they promote peace among some farmers who were no longer seeing eye to eye. Mr Matshiya said with farmers carrying out different agricultural projects, lack of fencing due to boundary issues would result in one farmer’s crops being destroyed by another farmer’s livestock. He said there was also need to look into the setup and infrastructure at the farms.

“Things like boreholes and roads among other infrastructure also need to be addressed. You would find that according to the demarcation some farms do not have boreholes while the next farmer might have more than one borehole. We are calling upon Government to rectify those issues.”

Mr Matshiya said there was a need for land allocation to youths as well so that they can carry out a number of projects.

“In our association we now have quite a number of young men and women who are involved in poultry, piggery but the youths work under their parents. If there is still land available in our district that area needs to be allocated to these youths and will be in tandem with Vision 2030 of empowering women and youths,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Land Commission (ZLC) recently revealed that it has decentralised its operations to all the country’s eight agricultural provinces in a move designed to give citizens easy access to its services.