The Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) will have its 82nd Annual Congress from the 20th to the 22nd of September 2022, at Milan Family Restaurant in the City of Gweru. The 21st of September will be dedicated to a conference under the theme,
“Accelerating Alliances for Sustainable Food Systems Transformation.
The theme is inspired by the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit and the Zimbabwe Food Systems Transformation Dialogues during the build-up to the Summit. There is now urgent need to transform dialogue into action guided by the Country’s food systems transformation pathways. The Theme is also inspired by ZFU’s new Strategic Plan for the period 2022 to 2026 premised on building resilience, commercialisation, and viability on a foundation of stakeholder alliances and sustainable business models. The creation of farmer centric business alliances will catalyse the transformation of food systems to become more resilient and sustainable and contribute towards achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
One of the key pillars in the ZFU 2022 to 2026 Strategic Plan is Advocacy and Stakeholder Engagement. An enabling policy environment is central to ensuring viability of farming. The Union needs capacity to engage in vital policy discourses and influence decisions to the benefit of its constituency. High on ZFU’s policy reform agenda is agricultural input and output pricing, input supply, extension service delivery, service provision, market access, protection of farmers against unfair external competition, accessibility, and cost of appropriately structure agricultural finance, service coverage of ICTs, and security of land tenure.
ZFU will require forging mutually beneficial stakeholder alliances to enhance the effectiveness of policy advocacy beneficial to all value chain players including government, private sector, research institutions, tertiary education institutions, development partners and non-government organisations. These alliances will enhance access by farmers to inputs, critical productivity-enhancing services, and markets for their produce, necessary for sustainable food systems transformation.
Improving farm productivity among its members will call for the Union to play a more adventurous and aggressive outwards looking role, including initiating alliances built on sustainable business models for farmers to access not only inputs but critical technical advice possible with pluralistic extension. At the same time stakeholder alliances will assist the Union to bundle its services with complementary support for its members such as insurance, financial access, and supply of improved genetics.
Policy advocacy will not be successful without well researched policy positions and alternatives for the decision makers in government to make. Pursuant to the advocacy and stakeholder engagement thematic area of the Strategic Plan, the Union will avail dedicated resources for researching, drafting position papers and policy briefs that inform policy makers. Resources will also be availed for processes necessary to engage in policy dialogue, to keep members well informed on the policy-related activities.
Conference Aim and Objectives
Goal
To develop and implement a farmer driven action plan based on alliances for food systems transformation, building on Zimbabwe’s 2021 United Nations Food Systems Transformation Dialogue outcomes.
Objectives
- To gather evidence for food systems transformation policy advocacy
- To document the state of last mile agricultural support infrastructure
- To evaluate the performance of current agricultural finance models for Zimbabwe
- To forge alliances for the development and implementation of a sustainable food system transformation action plan.
The policy advocacy conference will focus on four thematic areas of food systems transformation based on objectives 1-4 above.
Outputs
From this Conference will be a report that will be used as an advocacy tool to engage policy makers, including key government ministries and departments, parliamentary committees, and other relevant service providers.
Attendance
The conference will be attended by farmer leaders, Captains of industry, Senior Government officials, Academia, NGOs, Development Partners, the Media, and Civil Society Organisations. Attendance is physical.
For registration and further information please contact Adeva Email: info@zfu.org.zw Cell: +263 772 442 156
