People in Zimbabwe’s high density suburbs (townships) around town are now geared for the rainy season and land preparation. These preparations are being done to small pieces of open land that they have allocated to themselves.
But because of scarcity, unavailability and high prices pegged in US dollars few people have any fertilizer. However, there was the introduction of organic/urea fertilizer sometime last year from China to Zimbabwe. Though this was not taken seriously by most farmers in the country, maybe because of the source it was coming from, or because it was their first time and they were afraid of destroying their crops from the specifications which were complicated.
But Zimbabweans are so creative to quickly adjust to the situation. There is raw sewage coming out of the burst drainage pipes and people are making some canals to divert waste to these small pieces of land (A3s). I have seen people with sacks full of dried sewer matter wheeling it in push carts to their fields to act as manure or organic fertilizer.
The City Council used to clear the roadside drains in preparation for the rainy season but due to shortages of trucks and fuel they can no longer do that. People have taken over the duty of not only clearing but collecting manure for the benefit of their small pieces of land. But think of the stench smell when it rains and they want to weed the fields dressed with this unprocessed organic fertilizer.
The government should have taken this food security seriously and made agricultural inputs like fertilizers and seeds much cheaper so that they can be affordable by everyone and boost the food production in the country.
This entry was posted on November 6th, 2008 at 12:33 pm by Dennis Nyandoro and is filed under Inspiration, Shortages and Inflation, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.