The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo Senior Business Reporter
AGRIBANK has agreed in principle through its smart partnership scheme to offer loans to farmers in Matabeleland region and Midlands province under United Refineries Limited’s soya bean contract farming programme. Speaking at an agriculture stakeholder meeting in Bulawayo recently, Agribank Bulawayo branch manager Mrs Scholastica Madibha said the financial institution would soon launch its smart partner programme aimed at financing soya bean farmers in Matabeleland region and Midlands province.
“We have identified major buyers of your (farmers) products and what we have done is to get into these smart partnerships with them (buyers). What we do is that we sponsor you like what we intend to do under URL’s soya bean contract farming.
“We give you $700 per hectare of soya and then you sell to United Refineries and then we put a stop order at United Refineries and when you sell the product we get our money. When farmers don’t have a stop order facility farmers rarely come to the bank to pay the loan,” Mrs Madibha said.
Agribank is also engaged in smart partnership with tobacco and sugar cane farmers. The smart partnership initiative is part of the financial institution’s efforts to reduce the rate of defaulters.
Mrs Madibha said the financial institution was also seeking to engage an insurance firm to cover to pay for the losses which the soya bean farmers might incur in the event of a calamity.
URL chief executive officer Mr Busisa Moyo confirmed the company’s partnership with Agribank and hinted that the cooking oil and soap manufacturer had already started preparations for its soya bean contract farming programme.
Last year, the agro-processing firm availed $2 million for contract farming for farmers in Umguza and Jotsholo in Lupane but the programme failed to produce the anticipated yields.
“I can confirm that we are into negotiations with Agribank but we have already started doing contract farming on our own. They are coming to increase the size (to be put under soya beans), as a country we need about 30 000 hectares under soya beans for the manufacturing of cooking and stock feed for chickens-what we call soya meal.
“If we finish producing for the domestic market then we can look at the export market. It’s not a not a short term project but a long term project of up to seven to 10 years,” Mr Moyo said.
To date the company has already contracted more than 160 soya bean farmers. The soya bean contract farming programme is part of the Bulawayo headquartered firm’s move to avert transport costs as well as to reduce its import bill. The company procures its soya beans from the Mashonaland region mostly in Mazowe and Chinhoyi and occasionally imports from neighbouring countries in the event of adverse shortages. He said there was a need to promote horticulture cropping in semi arid and arid regions through developing irrigation schemes. “We want to denote the notion that regions four and five cannot do horticulture. As long as there are irrigation schemes this can be achieved,” Mr Moyo said.
