Faith Duri
Masvingo Provincial Agronomist has urged farmers in the province to take measures like planting late season crops to improve chances of producing good yields during the current rainy season.
Provincial Agronomist Sabina Chaduka said it would be wiser for farmers to enhance weed management as they seek to increase production levels.
“Farmers must take advantage of this rainy season and plant more crops especially late season crops for example sugar beans, sweet potatoes. Weeds impact negatively on yields primarily by competing with the crops for light, water and nutrients. At the start of the growing season, the requirement for these resources is small enough that both the crop and weeds can co-exists without significantly affecting each other’s growth.
“As the growing season progresses and plant size increases, weeds begin to deprive the crops of these resources hence the yield potential can be negatively impacted. Weed management is important in agriculture because failure to do so, yields will decrease, increase production costs, interfere with harvest and lower product quality,” said Chaduka.
Farmers are also urged to take control measures to destroy pests and diseases that might destroy their crops at an early stage and the need for top dressing also taking advantage of the rain showers in a bid to increase crop yields especially cereal crops.
“Top dressing is an application of manure or fertilizer to the surface layer of the soil so farmers are urged to do it because can increase the soils water holding capacity, drainage and also it can breakdown thatch , the layer of soil made up of organic debris that can prevent beneficial nutrients and more from reaching turfs roots.
“Some of the major reasons why top dressing is important are that it increases the potential to use less synthetic fertilizer, nutrient benefits, structural benefits and lastly boosted performance of crops that is why we are urging farmers to do top dressing because it is very important,” she said.
However she added that the update on the crop situation is not yet readily available for the whole province but the report will be updated on March 1, urging farmers to be able to quickly identify pests and diseases at early stages.
“Places like Chiredzi and Mwenezi are mostly affected by locusts so if they are unable to identify the pests at an early stage before they destroy the crops, that will give farmers good yields,” said Chaduka.
