Crop and livestock assessment survey on cards

Zim Now Writer

Government will, starting on January 20 to January 30, conduct a crop and livestock assessment aimed at availing early information on the national agricultural and food security targets.

Speaking during a press briefing permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Dr John Basera said they were mandated to conduct crop and livestock monitoring exercises annually.

“Crop and livestock assessment is one of the early warning methods to forecast the national food security status. It gives a snapshot of the performance of the sector and the different specific sub-sectors of the agricultural economy,” said Dr Basera.

Government also wants to verify areas planted to different crops in order to be able to tell production prospects in a particular season.

“Crop growth stages, conditions and the establishment of preliminary implications of the same on the production of different major crops is critical in policy formulation,” said Dr Basera.

Agricultural extension officers, who are the principal enumerators, will collect data from randomly sampled farmers in the 1 600 rural wards in the country with Dr Basera urging farmers and other stakeholders to cooperate with enumerators during the exercise.

The information collected will be used for early warning systems, policy programming, improvement of the national herd, planning for food security and measure performance of the overall sector.

The enumerators, in line with modernising and digitalisation of the thrust, will use modern technologies such Geographic Information Systems, open data kit and remote sensing from the Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency.