The Sunday News
THE farming season is almost half way through and the Grain Marketing Board still owes farmers a lot of money for produce delivered to various depots across the country.
The last reported figure was around $52 million, which was required to clear what GMB owed to the farmers. Two main questions scream for attention and responses.
Firstly why would GMB and the authorities allow this to persist and yet everyone know that Zimbabwe is an agro-based economy?
How on earth do we expect agriculture to fire the cylinders of our economy when GMB is not supporting poor peasant farmers who break their backs in scotching heat trying to fend for their families and in turn make this economy work?
I know that some executive reading this article is probably fuming saying: “Doesn’t this guy know that Government has no money, where does he expect us to get the money?”
My response is you got the produce from farmers for free and you sold it to your customers, so pay the farmers.
By not paying farmers on time for produce, which they delivered to you for free on time, you are killing the goose that lays golden eggs for this country.
The second bold question that begs for answers is why are the farmers unions so quiet as if there is no issue which needs intervention?
This pen thinks farmers unions need to remember who their constituency is and what their mandate is.
I have slowly noticed some farmers union transforming themselves into non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and salivating for donor funds.
The net effect of this move is that farmers unions are then prostituted into implementers of programmes and projects conceived and constructed by donors with little or no relevance or significance to smallholder and communal peasant farmers.
Farmers’ agenda is then defined and set else.
Farmers unions should go back to being membership based and driven so that farmers who are the members retain control and stake in defining the agenda of the union.
If this was the case, I argue here that farmers unions would scream loud against this injustice being perpetrated against farmers by GMB because members would be breathing hard on their necks.
In my books a farmers union just like most unions, is a lobby body for its constituency and hence it is expected to take no prisoners when it comes to ensuring that their members are served and serviced.
However, the unions are conspicuously silent most probably because the piper was paid by someone else (donor) and hence the tune is surely different.
I have said it before that I interact with a lot of smallholder farmers in my line of work and you can’t help but notice the void yearning for a farmers union to fill, not by mere membership registration but through active service provision.
Just this last week I met a number of farmers who are producing broilers deep in Nkayi District and they are seriously searching for markets, shouldn’t market practical linkage be one of the key benefits of being a member of a farmers union? One farmer has 100 broilers that are more than eight weeks and sweating for the market while watching his potential profit being eroded by the unnecessary cost of feed.
I, therefore, challenge the farmers union to take the lead in mending our agricultural sector.
How about borrowing the concept of country clubs from the former white commercial farmers and customise it to our situation so that smallholder communal farmers can meet and share experiences and generate networks in the process?
This could be all what is needed to create market linkages. Farmers need to meet and share their practical experiences and methods of solving everyday problems.
The other day I met a colleague in town looking for reflective material of the same type that is used on worksuits. This he says if put around the neck of calves it has the effect of scaring away nocturnal predators such as leopards. To me this is crucial information for sharing especially among farmers in new resettlement areas that are normally affected by wild predators.
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