Belarus boosts Zimbabwe breadbasket aspirations

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Belarus offer its ally Zimbabwe tractors, combine harvesters, harrows, trucks, among other agriculture equipment to increase agricultural productivity

from MARCUS MUSHONGA in Harare, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Bureau
HARARE, (CAJ News) – SEVERAL agreements signed with Belarus are a major boost in Zimbabwe’s pursuit of food security and returning the status as the breadbasket of Africa.

Delegations led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Belarusian counterpart, President Alexander Lukashenko, penned the agreements during the latter’s three-day state visit to Zimbabwe this week.

Belarus offered Zimbabwe 1 774 tractors, 74 combine harvesters, 210 planters, five low-bed trucks and various disc harrows that would complement the African country’s efforts to modernise its agricultural sector in order to eradicate hunger.

“Under the Second Republic, we took a resolve that we must be food secure. We would want as a nation, as a people to be food secure,” Mnangagwa said.

He added: “We have the land in Zimbabwe and we have rivers. I hope in another three-to-five years, the level of agriculture mechanisation in Zimbabwe will be as good as what I have seen in Belarus.”

Emmerson Mnangagwa, Alexander Lukashenko

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Belarussian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko

In its effort to modernise the country’s agriculture, Zimbabwe is channeling bigger budgets towards construction of dams in every province as well as intensifying irrigation services in a bid to counter increased climatic change.

Local companies are also involved in seed production that meets conditions of climatic change.

Zimbabwe, which in its 2022/2023 agricultural season recorded a bumper harvest of 3 million metric tonnes of maize, 467 000 metric tonnes for traditional grains, 140 000 metric tonnes for soybeans, 82 500 metric tonnes for sunflower and 350 000 metric tonnes for groundnuts, predicts an increased yields and hectarage this season following the agricultural equipment from Belarus.

– CAJ News

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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