Young Farmer, Collins Washayanyika Puts Education 5.0 Into Practice
By Desire Tshuma
Harare – The recently-introduced Heritage Based Curriculum (HBC) has proved to be effective as scholars who graduate from Higher Learning Institutions are putting their expertise into action.
One such graduate, Collins Washayanyika, is a 27 year old farmer who manages The Lea Farm in Mashonaland West where he has ventured into multi-purpose farming and created employment for 20 people in the process.
Inspired by his father Mr Cosmas Washayanyika, Collins has has utilized The Lea Farm intensively.
“My role model is my father. He took me to Blackfordby College of Agriculture where I studied farming. Though the college is very expensive, but my father struggled to fund my training and complete the programme,” Collins said.
On The Lea Farm, Collins is into Macadamia, Mangoes, prunes, wildlife keeping and wildlife roadrunner farming. In terms of wildlife he keeps impala, zebras, wilderbeasts, sables, warthogs,tsoko and hanga.
Currently there are 378 macademia trees and 24 mango trees.
“I am expecting to start harvesting macadamia nuts next year and each tree is expected to produce 400kg of nuts per year and the yield is for both the local market and export market. We are also soon going to see the influx of tourists as we are also into wildlife conservation.
“However we have the challenges of poachers who kill our animals though we try our best to secure them,” said Collins.
Besides The Lea Farm, Collins is renting at another farm where he is into commercial maize farming, he has harvested 10 tonnes of maize which he will deliver to the Grain Marketing Board.
“As a young farmer, I am however requesting bigger land from the government so that I can produce more to uplift our economy,” said Collins.
Meanwhile, there is a protracted land dispute between the Washayanyika family and neighbouring white farmers over The Lea Farm.
Patrick, Gary and Wayne Param claim to be the rightful owners saying they have the offer letter. The three white farmers are currently renting at a neighbouring Eubrie farm.
According to Mr Cosmas Washayanyika, the three white farmers are allegedly paying high profile lawmakers to elbow him out of the farm despite his holding of an offer letter.
