Zimbabwe food crisis: Replacing maize with sorghum and millet

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Read full article by Shingal Nyoka@ BBC News Harare   Photo Credit: Images stock

In what would have been unthinkable a few years ago, the Svosve family in north-eastern Zimbabwe is ditching maize for indigenous grains in order to overcome persistent drought and food shortages.

This is despite the fact that maize is second only to water in importance in the average Zimbabwean household.

It is not only a staple and a status symbol for farmers, but also an important cash crop.

But low yields have forced the Svosves, who are subsistence farmers, to focus more on growing sorghum and millet – both of which were staples before Portuguese traders in the 1500s brought maize from the Americas, according to historians.

When I visited the Svosves at their homestead in Mduzi, a semi-arid area with grey-coloured stony soil, members of the family were crowded around a threshing machine spitting out buckets of grain.

Family head Lovemore Svosve said they would have plenty to eat, even though the rainy season was disastrous.

“We planted a sizeable maize crop as well as sorghum and millet. But we got nothing from the maize. It was scorched after there was no rain for three months. We harvested just the traditional grains,” he said.

One of his wives, Rose Karina, brought out a small black pot with a few maize cobs in it. That was all they harvested from 10kg of maize seed and more than 100kg of fertiliser.

In comparison, stacked on their veranda were many sacks of sorghum. They were able to get more than one tonne from five kilogrammes of seed and fertiliser.

“We aren’t planting maize again. I don’t know how anyone in this area can after the last season,” she said, shaking her head.

Skills

Posted on

July 19, 2022

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