The Sunday News
THE Government will from next year stop inputs directly from suppliers for free distribution to farmers but will instead mobilise money that will be used to subsidise the price of the inputs to make them affordable.
For the past years, the Government has through various programmes bought inputs from suppliers and distributed them to farmers for free as a way of improving productivity and help farmers who were failing to procure the inputs.
Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Deputy Minister Responsible for Cropping Davis Marapira told farmers at the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union annual congress in Bulawayo on Friday that the Government will now subsidise inputs rather than dishing them out for free.
“There will be no free inputs next year but subsidised inputs where Government will give money directly to those who produce the inputs so that they can sell them at a price that many people can afford,” he said.
Deputy Minister Marapira said by subsidising the inputs the Government will ensure that all farmers benefit unlike in the present scenario where some farmers complained that they were not benefiting from the free inputs.
“All farmers whether communal, A1 or A2 will benefit from the subsidy,” he said.
The Government and various stakeholders this year promised to put close to $300 million to support farming mainly through procurement of inputs.
More than $252 million under the Presidential Input Scheme meant for the 2014/15 agricultural season is being mobilised to capacitate 1 600 000 communal, old resettlement, former Small Scale Purchase Areas and A1 households to be self-sufficient in food through provision of agricultural inputs valued at $184,8 million.
Small grain seed packs will draw from re-packaging of stocks delivered to the GMB estimated at 2 534 tonnes.
The inputs package targeted at grain producers, both maize and small grains, valued at around $115,5 per household and will comprise 10 kilogrammes of seed, 50 kilogrammes of double compound D and 50 kilogrammes of Ammonium Nitrate.
The support will also be extended to cotton farmers where 300 000 farmers will get input packs consisting of 10 kilogrammes of seed, half a kg carbaryl, half a litre karate, 5ml Acaricide and 50 grammes acenark.
ZCFU president, Mr Wonder Chabikwa, said farmers were capable of meeting their own input needs but funding remained a big challenge.
The issue of funding was being made worse, he said, by debt overhang for many farmers, limiting their capacity to procure all the necessary farming inputs.
“Farmers have huge debts, maybe the Government might consider some sort of debt relief first so that farmers can be able to stand on their own. It is even worse for maize farmers because sometimes they are made to wait for 60 days before they receive the payment. Right now the farming season is about to start but some are still to be paid by the Grain Marketing Board,” he said.
In an interview SeedCo sales and marketing manager, Mr Ivan Craig, said the idea of subsidising farmers was noble as it will instil a sense of responsibility among farmers.
“If you buy something you become responsible and obvious the attention you put will be different from something you are just given for free. As a seed house we do not see anything wrong in Government helping farmers through subsidies,” he said.
Mr Graig added that seed houses, unlike other companies that have received Government inputs in the past and abused it, will follow the agreed guidelines in selling the subsidised inputs.
Some stakeholders have noted that some companies, because of the various challenges they are facing, end up diverting money availed by Government to cover other areas of need which might not be related to production.
“There is no way we can divert the money from Government. The commodity we sell benefits a lot of people so it is easy to see if there is no product or rather if it is priced beyond the agreed prices,” he said.
However, he said there will be a need to monitor agro-dealers as in some cases they were involved in underhand deals which will see prices going up.
“We do not have power over how agro-dealers will price the products but we hope Government will have monitoring mechanisms in place,” said Mr Craig.
He also revealed that the company had enough stocks to meet this year’s demand.
“I cannot reveal quantities we have but we are more than capable of meeting the demand,” said Mr Craig.
