AT least 70% of Zimbabwean women are small-scale farmers and have been affected by climate change effects, posing food security threats, a government official said yesterday.
Speaking at a Takunda Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) workshop in Harare, Women Affairs ministry secretary Moses Mhike said drought and floods being experienced in the country were affecting women farmers more.
“70% of our women in Zimbabwe are small-scale farmers who rely on rain-fed agriculture, and the droughts and floods being experienced due to climate change effects are affecting their yields,“ Mhike said.
The Takunda RFSA, which is funded by USAid, is a multi-partner consortium which seeks to build the resilience of low-income people who may be chronically affected by climatic and economic shocks.
The five-year project targets vulnerable adult women and men, adolescent mothers, male and female youth (aged 18-35), women of the reproductive age group and children under five years.
Secretary in the Agriculture ministry John Basera said: "Climate-induced erratic rainfall patterns and increasing natural disasters have impacted Zimbabweans in general and smallholder farmers, hence the bold decision of our ministry to move with climate-proofing our agriculture through the revitalisation of irrigation schemes and the construction of dams to increase the area under irrigation.”
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Takunda programmes director Walter Mwasaa said climate change has been wrecking agricultural production in Africa and other parts of the world.
“Production worth more than US$45 billion is at risk, and subsistence is threatened due to crop failures and losses driven by rising temperatures, increasingly erratic rainfall, frequent weather extremes, and pest outbreaks,” he said.