PFUMBUDZA WILL ONLY SUCCEED IF IT BREAKS ZIM’S DEPENDENCY ON FOREIGN INPUTS.

Pfumbvudza success or failure.

Pfumbvudza is a brilliant idea, but after the failure of AGRA’s high input industrial farming scheme in Africa, Pfumbvudza can only succeed if it breaks Zimbabwe’s dependency on costly, high input farming that relies on western owned cashcrop, hybrid seeds, chemicals and fertilizer which make farming unsustainable and unaffordable for rural farmers.

Over the past two decades, low agricultural output has been blamed on droughts, land reform and sanctions, however, a major issue is farming has become unaffordable for rural farmers who once produced enough to feed over 70% of the population.

The reason being, government made rural farmers dependent fertilizers that destroy our soils; low nutrition, water thirsty, hybrid seeds that reduce yields overtime; putting those farmers on a pay-you-go-food-production system that has made it costly and unproductive for millions of rural farmers to produce food in low rainfall.

To make rural farmers productive again, Pfumbvudza must encourage farmers to breed traditional seeds, adapt them to climate and pests, to lower production costs, improve yields and reduced dependence on foreign seeds.