via Top civil servant blasts idle new farmers 19 July 2014
A SENIOR civil servant has taken a swipe at Zanu PF youths for under-utilising farms that were seized from whites under the government’s controversial land reform programme.
Manicaland Provincial Administrator, Fungai Mbetsa, was speaking at a workshop organised by the National Association for Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO) to review the government’s Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset) programme.
In surprisingly candid remarks, Mbetsa said the youths had now turned once-productive farmland into wastelands.
“Most of our young farmers who took over farms lack innovation and expertise on farming. They want lavish lifestyles before they invest in farming,” Mbetsa said.
“They do not have effective skills to develop their farming businesses. They need training to do research not to buy posh cars and try to live lavish lifestyles,” he said.
He said Zimbabwe needed youths who were innovative so that they could help in the value addition of the country’s natural resources.
“We need youths who are innovative, who can do scientific researches. We need value addition of produces by our small-scale farmers. Horticulture products are rotting in Honde Valley and why can’t we bring technology for the benefit of our people,” he said.
“Farming is now a business and our young farmers must adapt to changes in technology. Our traditional ways and farming methods must always change from time to time.
“We are saying the majority of our youths and new farmers must change. Can we develop if we continue to be stuck in old methods of farming?”
Mbetsa’s statement comes at a time when the Central African Building Society (CABS) says it has halted disbursement of youth empowerment loans due to a high default rate.
The group’s managing director, Kevin Terry, recently told Parliament that they stopped disbursements in May this year and will only consider resuming after the trustees come up with a new strategy.
COMMENTS
Interesting !! The youth must farm as a bussines . What the hell is a farm weather legal own by black or white it’s a frigging business
How do you review a programmme which has not taken off?
Its taken this “top civil servant” 15 years to realise that farming is a business.
If these youth knew anything about farming they wouldn’t conduct themselves as reported. Farming requires incredible commitment and ability that these youth obviously don’t have so why were allocated land? It doesn’t make any sense at all to remove experts and replace them with opportunists who know nothing but then this is what this government is good at. We fought to remove a racist regime and are doing the exact same thing as they did!!!