Thulani Mpofu

Zimbabwe is evaluating the efficacy of a new, more energy-efficient method of curing tobacco with a view to switching from traditional approaches that burn too much coal and firewood.

From 1 July this year Zimbabwe will enforce its mandatory food fortification programme to fight malnutrition among people, especially women and children.

Wheat farming in Zimbabwe was projected to rebound this winter after government raised US$140 million (R1, 96 billion) to be loaned to farmers to plant 70 000ha to wheat, which was expected to yield 280 000t.

The Zimbabwe government recently withdrew a tobacco tax less than a week after its introduction. The 10% tax on tobacco was imposed on 31 March and scrapped on 5 April.

Bruce Moffat, a great-great-great grandson of Zimbabwe's earliest white missionary, Robert Moffat, has won a protracted court battle over the ownership of a farm the Moffats have worked since 1910.

A joint venture between Schweppes Zimbabwe and a government parastatal, which invested US$3 million (R45m) in a fruit-processing plant near the capital Harare last year, is to spend an additional US$10 million (R150m) on another beneficiation facility in southern Zimbabwe.

The slaughtering of fewer broilers and the production of fewer eggs had resulted in the decrease of poultry production in Zimbabwe in 2016. This was according to an industry report.