Horticulture |
Zimbabwe should
develop strategies to foster growth of the horticulture sector for it to
retain its position as the country's second largest foreign currency
earner after tobacco.
Speaking at Prime
SeedCo field day held at Stapleford Research Station yesterday,
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and
Irrigation Development Ringson Chitsiko, said horticulture farmers must
buckle down and restore the sector's glory as Zimbabwe's second largest
foreign currency earner.
"We are here to put
our thoughts together and work towards returning the horticulture
sector to its original second place after tobacco in respect to
agricultural exports, even beyond tobacco and be number one agricultural
exporting subsector in Zimbabwe," Engineer Chitsiko said. Engineer
Chitsiko lauded Prime SeedCo for their ever-growing expertise in
developing seed varieties that are critical for the growth of the
horticulture sector.
"I would like to
thank Prime SeedCo for its ever continuing efforts in screening,
demonstrating and extending the technologies in horticulture
production," he said. Engineer Chitsiko highlighted the need to
intensify production in this sector to curb the importation of
horticulture seeds from Europe, Asia as well as Southern African
countries such as South Africa and Zambia.
"This is a sector
that we do not only want to revive and expand but we also want to
intensify because it has great returns. It's now time we start producing
horticulture planting material particularly in respect to vegetable
seed production , we are currently importing from far field as Europe
and Asia, South Africa, Zambia as well, we want those countries to start
looking up to us for horticultural seed," said the Permanent Secretary.
Adding on to
permanent secretary's sentiments, Prime Seed Co managing director Willie
Ranby said his company was targeting to expand its local market share
from the current 45-50 percent at the same time growing the company into
the continent.
"Prime Seed Co has a
45-50 percent local market share and we are working hard to grow that,
now that Seed-Co has offices in Ghana we will be opening a vegetable
subsidiary in Accra within the next six months," said Mr Ranby.
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