The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Farming Reporter
THE Government has set sights at intensifying and encouraging contract farming as the agricultural sector continues to suffer from low financial support especially from banks.
Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Deputy Minister responsible for cropping Davis Marapira said the Government has covered considerable ground towards rehabilitating and developing irrigation schemes throughout the country to allow farmers to also access water after entering into contract partnerships.
“We are moving forward with the rehabilitation and development of irrigation schemes and we have done quite a lot of them in various parts of the country.
“We have moved a lot under contract farming with Antelope and Ingwizi which is a partnership between Agricultural and Rural Development Authority and Trek Petroleum currently having 650 hectares of maize each. We also expect them to be cropping winter wheat soon,” Deputy Minister Marapira said.
Contract farming arrangements are not new in the Zimbabwean agricultural sector.
The great cotton boom from the 1990s when smallholders entered cotton production in a big way was driven by contract arrangements, initially with the parastatal Cottco, and then with a variety of companies following liberalisation.
During its peak, contract farming resulted in increased and quality yields.
At the moment, contract farming is driving tobacco farming where farmers have entered into agreement with contractors such as Chinese company Tianze.
“Contract farming has gone a long way basically in assisting us on the financial aspect with our partners being able to procure state-of-the-art equipment such as centre pivots, which greatly improves our yield per hectare for instance we are expecting to be doing 7,5 tonnes per hectare of maize and 10,5 tonnes per hectare of wheat.
“Farmers don’t have enough capital to embark on full-fledged farming and thus as Government we are encouraging contract farming which has done well in tobacco and to an extent in cotton. We want the same to happen to strategic crops such as maize and wheat as well as soya beans, which is also used to manufacture stock feed as well,” said Deputy Minister Marapira.
Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union president Mr Wonder Chabikwa said although contract farming was ideal mostly for smallholder farmers with relatively low capital inputs and investments, over the years it has left the majority of them impoverished.
“Contract farming is supposed to help because we are talking of one who wants an agricultural commodity and the farmer who’s got the land. It is an alternative whereby the contractor provides the funding and the farmer the land as well as the labour.
“In essence contract farming in Zimbabwe started in 2004 when banks couldn’t lend to farmers and our experience over the years has proved that it’s a “dangerous animal” as it has left farmers seriously indebted as realized by the demise of the cotton sector and the same was done on maize and farmers,” Mr Chabikwa said.
He said there was a need for Government to come up with a Contract Farming Policy so as to enable a win-win situation between farmers and contractors.
“The policy framework should stipulate that in the event of a mishap since farming has a number of risks whereby constant yields are not guaranteed as they are sometimes depressed due to drought, the two parties should succumb together sharing the value of the yields proportionally.
“When that happens then contract farming becomes a nice animal. Both the contractor and the farmer should have an input in the policy and ensure it’s a win-win situation but right now it’s skewed to the advantage of the contractor,” said Mr Chabikwa.
Presenting his National Budget Statement in November last year, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said farmers should benefit from contract farming arrangements that have become an important win-win scheme for financing agriculture and guaranteeing commodity inputs supply to respective contractors.
