The Sunday News
THE Government should enforce a policy that makes it mandatory for every farmer in the country to contribute a certain quantity of maize to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) every year to improve national food security, an official has said.
In an interview with Sunday News, the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union Matabeleland North provincial chairman, Mr Winstone Babbage, expressed concern over the poor national grain reserves and challenged the Government to put a deliberate policy that forces resettled farmers and communal farmers to deliver a minimum quantity of maize to the GMB.
“As ZCFU, what we have been pushing for is that, each A1 farmer and communal farmer contribute one tonne of maize to GMB and A2 farmers contribute about three tonnes to GMB, I am sure that our silos will be full,” said Mr Babbage.
He added that farmers in Matabeleland were expecting improved harvests this year compared to previous years.
“This year we have a lot of maize as compared to the previous ones. I don’t have the exact quantity of how much maize is there but I can tell that farmers have a lot of maize. I would like to urge the Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Cde Joseph Made to have these extension officers go out and identify those farmers with maize and make sure that farmers sell it to GMB,” he said.
Mr Babbage also said they were satisfied with the maize producer price gazetted by the Government.
“We are quite happy with the US$390 per tonne and we want to challenge the Government to pay quickly for the delivered maize,” he said.
A2 farmer in Umguza, Mr Joseph Moyo, said they could contribute to the GMB on condition that they timeously get paid for the maize delivered.
“It’s a good idea for farmers to contribute to the GMB but we have been having challenges when the organisation fails to pay for the delivered maize,” he said.
The farmer also highlighted that there was a need to put up irrigation facilities as the rainfall was not consistent in Matabeleland province.
“Farmers in Matabeleland may fail to contribute to the national reserves every year because of the erratic rains. Out of every 10 seasons about five to six years have low rainfall, two are good and the other two are just average. So irrigation is critical in the sense that with water harvesting it then enables us to crop right through the year and contribute to GMB,” said Mr Moyo.
The country’s grain reserves are supposed to be 500 000 tonnes but has plummeted to critical levels in the past years due to a plethora of reasons chief among them poor rainfall.
The country has been importing from Zambia to cover the food deficit after the country failed to harvest due to poor rainfall.
The country requires 1,8 million tonnes of maize for human and livestock consumption annually.
Although the final crop assessment is reportedly still under way, indications were pointing towards a bumper harvest after most parts of the country received above average rains last season.
