Zimbabwe’s farmers do not need another speech telling them the climate is changing. They need the means to survive it.
Today, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has urged traditional leaders to mobilize rural communities toward climate-resilient farming ahead of the 2026/27 season. He spoke at the launch of the Pfumvudza/Intwasa program in Chivi, where he also warned that the country should expect normal to below-normal rainfall. The advice was sound: Plant drought-tolerant crops, conserve moisture, follow extension guidance. Sorghum and millet have earned their place in a country where rain decides whether a household eats.
But advice is not a harvest. Resilience requires seed that farmers can afford when they need it, fertilizer that reaches the people it was meant for, and irrigation that works after the launch ceremony ends. It requires credit, reliable weather information, and markets that do not punish a good crop. Traditional leaders can encourage adaptation. They cannot repair a broken pump or finance a farmer who has spent his savings on successive bad seasons.
The government’s own figures show where its attention lies. According to The Herald, more than 2.3 million Pfumvudza/Intwasa plots have been prepared, and the state says it has secured adequate inputs. Those numbers measure preparation. They say nothing about what will be harvested. A prepared plot cannot summon rain, and enrollment in a program is not the same as a family fed.
The strategy also contains a contradiction. Farmers who receive state assistance are urged to deliver part of their harvest to the Grain Marketing Board, and households are encouraged to store surplus. Both assume a surplus. A family that grows barely enough to eat cannot rebuild national reserves without gambling its own food security. A strategy that depends on the poor having something to spare will fail in exactly the season it is needed.
That season may be this one. The Meteorological Services Department forecasts below-normal rainfall from October through December, and The Herald has reported that El Niño, rising fuel and fertilizer costs, and disrupted global supply chains could converge. Farmers can change what they plant and how they manage water. They cannot control the price of imported inputs or build public infrastructure from nothing. That work belongs to the state.
Officials put strategic grain reserves at roughly 290,000 tonnes. No one yet knows whether that is enough, because the reserves have not been tested against a failed season. Nor is it clear how quickly aid would reach households that lose their crops, or whether irrigation schemes in drought-prone districts are functional and affordable for the people nearest them.
Climate resilience should be visible in the budget, in working irrigation, in inputs delivered on time, and in a government that identifies the hungry before they are hungry. Mobilizing people is not the same as equipping them.
When the rains fail, a speech will not irrigate a field, and a slogan will not fill a granary.
Zimbabwe’s farmers already know the climate is changing. What they lack is any assurance that they will not face it alone.
Source: President Mnangagwa, You Cannot Lecture a Farmer Out of a Drought – Zealous Thierry
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