President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said that government is carrying out a survey on multiple farm owners and others with big farms, in a bid to ensure equitable land distribution to the majority of the people.
BY Stephen Chadenga
Critics have often accused ruling party officials of owning more than one farm, with others having large tracts of land lying idle. “The land commission is moving around carrying out surveys on people with big farms and multiple farm owners,” Mnangagwa told Zanu PF party supporters at a rally in Mvuma on Saturday.
“If we find out that you have a big farm more than the size required in your region, we will downsize it. If you have more than one farm, we will take the other one and give to those without land.”
Mnangagwa reiterated that the land reform was irreversible, but, however, said the exercise (land reform) would not be reversed, hence there was need to modernise agriculture to increase productivity.
He said government was working to ensure that all districts in the country were under irrigation.
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“We must mechanise, we must modernise our agriculture and this is the responsibility of government,” he said.
“We have programmes with Brazil, Belarus, India and China that are targeted towards agriculture. Our country is an agricultural country, so we must uplift agriculture.”
Mnangagwa said government had set aside $400 million for the presidential input scheme targeting 1,8 million households across the country so that people could benefit from farming inputs.
He said Zimbabwe had remained isolated for the last 18 years and it was now time to move on to revive the economy.
“Zimbabwe is now open for business and we should attract foreign direct investment,” he said.