No to cellphone farming: Shamu

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GOVERNMENT will not hesitate to repossess farms from newly-resettled farmers not farming, a Cabinet minister said yesterday. Media, Information and Publicity Minister Webster Shamu yesterday said some people were “cellphones farmers”.

Minister Shamu who is also legislator for Chegutu East Constituency, urged farmers to fully make use of land allocated to them.

“The situation obtaining in the country currently, where some farmers including farmers in this district (Chegutu) are absentee landlords running their farms by cellphones is untenable. Government will not hesitate to repossess any farms that are not being utilised,” he said.

He said considering that agriculture was the backbone of the economy and that policies such as the indigenisation and empowerment depended on it, Government needed to

consider committing more resources the sector.

In a speech read on his behalf by the ministry’s deputy director, Mr Simbarashe Tavengerwei, Minister Shamu urged banks to finance farming.

He said field days continued to send a clear message to both internal and external detractors that the land reform programme was irreversible.

He lauded Mr and Mrs Takawira for setting a good example on how to use land profitably.

Minister Shamu said when Zanu-PF embarked on the land reform programme in 2000, it was with the aim to restore the land to the disenfranchised masses.

“It was to decongest the rural peasant farmers, resettling them into either A1 or A2 model resettlement schemes.

“Indeed it was in the quest to fulfill our people’s wishes to be the owners and guardians of their own land when they took up arms to wage the liberation struggle.

“Rainfall patterns are rapidly changing and it has increasingly become difficult for farmers to plan and prepare for the rain season. Global warming is therefore a reality that farmers must wake up to,” Minister Shamu said.