Temba Mliswa, the legislator for Norton is inspiring many a farmer in Zimbabwe and demonstrating that with proper planning, blacks can guarantee the country’s food security.
Mr. Walter Chigodora, the Managing Director of Agro Yields whose company contracted Hon Mliswa said he was amazed by the good work that the legislator is doing at his farm to ensure that he gets a bumper harvest this season.
“We gave Hon Mliswa all the inputs. As Agro Yields, we visited Hon Mliswa’s farm in Hurungwe last week. By that time we had supplied him with Compound D fertilizer and this week we are supplying him the Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer.
“We were quite excited with the work on the farm. Hon Mliswa can easily get between 9 tonnes and 10 tonnes of maize per hectare. We encourage other farmers to follow the example set by Hon Mliswa. With such kind of farming, Zimbabwe can easily return to its former glory days as the breadbasket of Africa. If we can have only 10 farmers of Hon. Mliswa’s calibre, our country can be food-secure and we can export maize to other countries in the region,” Mr. Chigodora said.
Spring Farm is famous for producing bumper harvests every season since Hon Mliswa was allocated the farm at the height of the land reform programme.
Comrade Setfree Mafukidze, a youthful politician who identifies himself as a patriot was full of praises for Hon. Mliswa.
“Love Mliswa or hate him, that man is an epitome of what a successful black farmer can do. Mliswa is a man of action driven by the desire to see Zimbabwe prosper as a nation. All farmers should emulate Mliswa in the quest to make our nation food-secure,” Mafukidze said.
Hon Mliswa is a beneficiary of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Farm Mechanisation Scheme. The government has taken over the debt owed to the central bank by the beneficiaries of the mechanisation scheme.
Agro Yield extends inputs to farmers and offers extension advice to farmers. Unlike the Pfumvudza scheme, farmers will repay Agro Yield for the inputs. It also rehabilitates irrigation equipment.
Hon Mliswa has grown maize on 400 hectares, 20 hectares of sugar beans, 1 hectare of cowpeas, and 1 hectare of groundnuts. He is also into livestock where he has 200 goats, 200 sheep, and 1 200 cattle spread around Zimbabwe.