FACILITIES

Background

The Trust farm at 1,500m a.m.s.l. with a mean annual rainfall of 850 mm is situated 18km due North of Harare and its southern boundary is contiguous with Harare City.  Land area is 700 ha, of which 250ha is arable.

There is a 67ha field laboratory and the balance of the area is taken up for commercial crop production. The field laboratory is served by a water ring main to provide full irrigation and there is sufficient water to irrigate in addition 55ha of commercial Winter cereal and supplement some 100ha of Summer grain crop.

There is a veld grazing area of 320 paddocked hectares and 14 ha of irrigated fertilised pasture. The farm runs a 400 head beef unit with an off take of 200 head of finished steers per year.

There is also a 144 sow pig unit producing 2,550 baconers per year. The Unit Practices Artificial Insemination in order to achieve optimum genetics. Practical Hands on Training is provided at nominal cost with a limited number of trainees housed on site and supervised by the Pig Unit Stockman

The Trust has drilled 30 Boreholes and has no surface water. Water is currently supplied by 21 of these boreholes.  Irrigation is supplied by double pumping from boreholes into overnight storage reservoirs and then on to the land.  

The soils are all heavy red clay derived from epidiorite and greenstone schist and subsurface water yield and soil fertility are thus good.

Infrastructure include offices, sheds, store rooms, greenhouses, an auditorium and conference facilities, crop drying facilities, silos, farm villages and is supported by a good range of equipment, vehicles, power and water reticulation.

There is a well equipped non-residential conference centre seating 400 with a 70 seat seminar room, a 10 seat Boardroom and a kitchen.