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Herald Reporter
Banks should fund A2 farmers to address food security and nutrition, a Cabinet Minister has said. Speaking at the National Defence College in Harare on Wednesday on the importance of agriculture to the economy, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister Joseph Made said efforts should be made to convince the banks to support farmers.
He said inadequate funding limited the range and intensity of crop and livestock production.
“The few bank loans being extended to farmers are largely short-term in nature and fall short of meeting full crop and livestock enterprise cycles,” he said. In addition, loan interest rates and transaction costs are high and unaffordable and render most farming operations unviable.”
Minister Made said Government should address the high interest rates charged by banks and establish agriculture support schemes. He said Government would capacitate existing parastatals and establish new ones to support agriculture market development.
Minister Made said principles for the establishment of the Zimbabwe Agriculture Commodity Exchange were being finalised for presentation to Cabinet.
Owing to ageing infrastructure, Minister Made said, the country was losing five percent of the maize annually at post-harvesting.
“Poor farm storage facilities and infrastructure are increasing post harvest loses ,” he said.
Minister Made attributed most of the challenges the sector was facing to sanctions imposed by the West on Zimbabwe.
“To this effect, we must find home grown solutions that focus on leveraging funding from our assets and resources and to exhibit the necessary discipline to utilise the limited resources for agriculture development,” he said.
Agriculture is one of the sectors defined in the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) as key to propel the economy.
Online Reporter