• 2025/2026 output estimated at 2.74m MT, with maize at 2.35m MT, a 29% increase on ZimStat’s corrected 2024/2025 base of 1.82m MT, not 2%, enabling food security and potential regional exports.
• Soyabean output jumped 129% to 96,129 MT, and nearly doubling of production eases feed costs for poultry/livestock, cuts soya meal import needs, and signals oilseed promotion strategy is working, with direct margin implications for agro-industrial firms
• Broad agricultural recovery across crops: Cotton up 26% to 77,212 MT with COTTCO rescue prioritized, tobacco up 7% to 378,322 MT boosting FX earnings, underpinning 5% GDP growth and reducing import pressure while Cabinet reaffirms Pfumvudza and irrigation

Key: Green cereal production in million tonnes, Red: Shortfall in 000, Source: Zimstat, Equity Axis

Harare- Zimbabwe has projected a national cereal surplus of between 550,945 and 964,945 metric tonnes through to March 2027, with total cereal production for the 2025/2026 summer season estimated at 2.74 million metric tonnes.

This was disclosed by the Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Water Resources Development in a report presented to Cabinet on 21 April 2026, and noted and approved at the Eleventh Cabinet Meeting. The report covered the Second Round Crop, Livestock and Fisheries Assessment for the current season and presented a picture of broad-based agricultural recovery across grain, oilseeds, livestock, horticulture, and industrial crops.

The headline numbers represent a significant reversal from the food insecurity conditions that characterised much of 2024, when El Niño-induced drought compressed output across the SADC region. The 2025/2026 season marks the kind of recovery that changes macroeconomic inputs, lower import requirements, reduced pressure on foreign currency reserves allocated to grain procurement, and improved household incomes in rural communities where agricultural earnings drive consumption.

The Cabinet report cited the 2024/2025 maize base as 2.29 million metric tonnes, against which the projected 2025/2026 output of 2.35 million metric tonnes represents a 2% increase. That comparison flatters the base. ZimStat's 2024/2025 Post-Harvest Survey Report, the authoritative post-season measurement, recorded actual maize output at 1,819,819 metric tonnes, well below the government's in-season projection of 2.3 million.

Against the corrected ZimStat base, the 2025/2026 projected output of 2.35 million metric tonnes represents a genuine increase of approximately 29%, not 2%. The distinction matters because it changes the character of the current season's achievement. This is not a modest improvement on a near-normal prior season, but a 29% recovery from an output level that itself represented a rebound from the drought-ravaged 2023/2024 season's 635,000 metric tonnes , meaning Zimbabwe has gone from 635,000 MT to 1.82 million MT to a projected 2.35 million MT across three consecutive seasons, a sequential recovery trajectory that reflects both improving rainfall conditions and the compounding effect of Pfumvudza/Intwasa adoption.

The surplus projection of between 550,945 and 964,945 metric tonnes must be read against the corrected base. Zimbabwe's national maize consumption requirement runs at approximately 1.8 to 2 million metric tonnes annually under normal conditions, meaning a production figure of 2.35 million MT provides a clear buffer above domestic demand before strategic reserves are factored in.

The upper bound of the surplus range, approaching one million metric tonnes above consumption, would allow Zimbabwe to re-enter regional grain export markets for the first time in years, supplying Zambia, Mozambique, or the DRC at a moment when Southern Africa's regional cereal balance remains tight. The lower bound still represents a comfortable domestic position.

The range reflects genuine uncertainty in post-harvest losses, GMB off-take rates, and consumption pattern assumptions, and the Cabinet's inclusion of Strategic Reserves lifts the total grain figure to 2.876 million metric tonnes, a strong food security position by any recent historical comparison. Cabinet's reaffirmation of Pfumvudza acceleration and irrigation development as priority interventions confirms that the programme remains the load-bearing pillar of food security policy going into the 2026/2027 planting season.

Soyabean: The Most Significant Number in the Report

The single most significant number in the Cabinet assessment is not maize, it is the 129% increase in soyabean production, from 41,919 metric tonnes in 2024 to an estimated 96,129 metric tonnes in 2025/2026. This is not a rounding-error improvement or a weather-driven recovery. It is a near-doubling of output in a single season, and it has structural implications for Zimbabwe's agricultural value chain that extend well beyond the field.

Soyabean is the critical input for poultry and livestock feed manufacturing, vegetable oil processing, and protein meal production for the broader agro-industrial sector. Zimbabwe's poultry industry, the fastest-growing protein category by volume in the domestic food basket,  is a direct consumer of soya meal, and feed cost is the primary variable that determines the competitiveness of egg and broiler production. A domestic soya crop that nearly doubles reduces the import bill for soya meal and crude soya oil, eases the foreign currency pressure on feed manufacturers, and improves the cost economics of the downstream protein value chain.

For listed agro-industrial companies, including those in the Innscor Africa ecosystem and the independent milling and feed segment, the 2025/2026 soya crop is an input cost improvement that will show in margins before it shows in any headline figure.

The 129% increase also signals that the government's oilseed promotion strategy,  incentivising farmers to shift marginal maize hectarage toward soya through price guarantees and contract farming arrangements, is generating visible results. Whether the output level can be sustained or improved in 2026/2027 depends on whether the GMB pricing framework, currently under review following the maize incentive price reduction announced earlier in the season, provides sufficient signal to retain the expanded soya hectarage.

 Cotton, Tobacco, and the Industrial Crop Recovery

Cotton production is estimated at 77,212 metric tonnes, a 26% increase from 61,289 metric tonnes in the prior season, and the Cabinet report's specific reference to a corporate rescue initiative for the relevant state-owned enterprise , understood to be the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe, which has operated in financial distress for several years , is the policy signal embedded within the agricultural data. A 26% production increase is commercially meaningless if the cotton marketing and ginning infrastructure cannot process the crop efficiently, pay farmers promptly, and connect to export markets at competitive prices.

Cabinet's adoption of expeditious payment of farmers for cotton deliveries as a strategic intervention addresses the most persistent complaint from cotton farmers, which is that delayed payment by COTTCO has historically discouraged replanting in the following season. The corporate rescue framing suggests a recognition that the structural problems of the state ginner cannot be deferred indefinitely without threatening the production gains the field-level data now shows.

Tobacco production is estimated at 378,322 metric tonnes against 353,452 metric tonnes in the prior season, a 7% increase that extends Zimbabwe's recovery in its most important foreign currency earning crop. Tobacco is the single largest legitimate foreign currency earner after gold, and the 2025/2026 season's performance ,  approaching levels not seen since the early 2000s , is a result of consistent investment by both large-scale commercial farmers and the contracted smallholder segment that has grown substantially under contract farming arrangements financed by the tobacco merchant houses.

For Zimbabwe's macroeconomic trajectory, a strong agricultural season matters in ways that go beyond food security. It reduces the import bill for cereals and soya meal. It generates foreign currency from tobacco and cotton exports. It improves rural household incomes and drives consumption demand in the sectors, retail, fast-moving consumer goods, mobile financial services , that serve rural Zimbabwe. It reduces the fiscal cost of the government's grain support programme. And it strengthens the ZiG's purchasing power stability in an economy where food prices carry a heavy weight in the consumer price index.

The IMF's recently approved Staff Monitored Programme for Zimbabwe projected 5% GDP growth in 2025/2026. An agricultural sector that grew 5% in aggregate, as Cabinet's report confirms, is delivering exactly the output the growth model requires from a sector that employs the majority of Zimbabwe's workforce. The question that the second-half of 2026 must answer is whether the ZiG price framework, the GMB incentive structure, and the logistics and marketing infrastructure are sufficient to convert a good growing season into sustained farmer confidence for the 2026/2027 planting cycle. A single good season does not change the structural fragility of Zimbabwean agriculture. A sequence of them, supported by the right price signals and investment in irrigation and input supply, begins to.

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