The Sunday News
THE country has adequate seed maize for the 2014-15 summer cropping season for commercial, smallholder and communal farmers, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Deputy Minister, Cde Davis Marapira, has said.
In an interview, Deputy Minister Marapira said the country had about 30 000 tonnes of seed maize available for the 2014-15 summer cropping season.
He said the national demand for seed maize for both commercial and subsistence farming was about 16 000 tonnes.
“We have adequate seed maize for the 2014-15 summer cropping season. Some of the seed maize would be distributed to smallholder and communal farmers by Government while GMB and other private outlets would also be selling the seed to commercial farmers.
“The country has about 30 000 tonnes of seed maize against a national demand of about 16 000 tonnes,” he said.
Deputy Minister Marapira said the country would have to import about 240 000 tonnes of fertiliser to supplement local fertiliser producers who can only manage to produce 60 000 tonnes.
“We want to import maize because our local producers have failed to meet the national demand of about 300 000 tonnes each cropping season,” he said.
Sable Chemical Industries, the country’s sole producer of AN has a production capacity of 240 000 tonnes annually.
However, due to liquidity challenges and other circumstances beyond the Kwekwe based company’s control, Sable is now producing 80 000 tonnes of fertiliser annually which is less than a third of the national demand.
Deputy Minister Marapira said the Government also needed to import over 600 000 tonnes of maize to supplement the national granary after local farmers failed to meet the national maize demand in the harvesting period for the 2013-14 summer cropping season.
He said local farmers had contributed 1.4 million tonnes of maize to the granary against a national demand of two million tonnes.
Deputy Minister Marapira said the country needed a supplementary 600 000 tonnes of maize to sustain the country up to the next harvesting period.
“GMB has about 1.4 million tonnes of maize in stock. This, however, is not enough for the country as our national demand for maize is about two million tonnes. We have a deficit of about 600 000 tonnes and we will have to import them from neighbouring countries,” he said.
Deputy Minister Marapira said of the 1.4 million tonnes of maize that were received by the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) from local farmers, over 200 000 tonnes were contributed by communal and smallholder farmers.
He attributed it to the timely distribution of farming inputs to smallholder and communal farmers under the Presidential Input Support Scheme which benefitted about 1,6 million families countrywide.
Under the Presidential Input Support Scheme each family was receiving 10kg of seed maize, 50kg of ammonium nitrate (AN) fertiliser and 50 kg of compound D while those in agro-ecological regions that receive fewer rains would receive 5kg of sorghum or millet seed.
“What is most interesting is that our smallholder and communal farmers contributed over 200 000 tonnes of maize to the granary in the harvesting period for the 2013-14 summer cropping season. Some are still delivering their produce to GMB and they could be more.
“We are happy that our communal and smallholder farmers did not let us down after receiving inputs under President Mugabe’s input support scheme last year. The input support scheme was very helpful,” he said.
