President Robert Mugabe on Saturday admitted that the country has been hard hit by a massive drought citing climate change as the root cause of the chronic droughts.
This comes after most parts of the country have been hit by a massive droughts caused by a prolonged dry spells. The falling yields are evident that there is a pending drought in most parts of the country.
Addressing multitudes of people that attended the day to commemorate Zimbabwe’s Independence Day, President Mugabe acknowledged that the country is in a calamitous need of food aid to curtail food scarcities triggered by the protracted dry spell.
“I must say many parts of the country unfortunately succumbed to a prolonged dry spell, thus putting a large dent on our efforts to achieve national food security.
“We have by now learnt, albeit in painful way the true meaning of climate change while the early rains had given us hope of a good harvest as has persistently happened in previous years,” said the President.
President Mugabe hinted that the country needs an irrigation policy to curb the series of chronic droughts.
“We need to develop a national irrigation policy to counter the persistent droughts that are so frequent and are clearly caused by climate change.
“I nonetheless, want to assure all our citizens that government is putting in place contingency measures to ensure that no one will starve,” he said.
While this gives relief to many farmers who saw their crops wilting in January and February, it would infer that the already cash-stripped government has to raise money to secure food for its affected citizens.
Moving forward President Mugabe said, “Already, under the more food for Africa Programme, government has acquired a vast array of Agricultural equipment and tractors from Brazil, for use by smaller farmers, on a cost recovery basis.
“As we look ahead to the next agriculture season, we hope for better rains and there will be a better state of preparedness.”
