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Tawanda Mangoma Business Correspondent
AGRICULTURE, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development deputy minister responsible for cropping Davis Marapira has urged cotton farmers to continue harvesting their crop despite the current prices which they deem unfavourable.Cotton farmers have been threatening to boycott harvesting their crop in protest over poor prices being offered by ginners. Farmers are demanding a minimum of 60 cents per kilogramme of seed cotton.
During the last two seasons, the crop has been selling at an average price of 42 cents per kilogramme which is way below the 2011 season prices which were almost $1.
Marapira said cotton farmers should be rational and desist from neglecting their ripe cotton in the field as protest over poor pricing.
“Cotton farmers must continue harvesting their crop despite the existence of unfavourable pricing. They must consider expenses which they have already incurred in producing that crop and see if they will recover them by not picking cotton from the field,” Deputy Minister Marapira said.
“A realistic farmer will never do such a thing. I guess that the report on farmers abandoning their cotton on the field is a lot of exaggeration. How can someone after cultivating, spraying and weeding his farm just wake up and decide to abandon hectares of land under cotton? It doesn’t make sense.”
Marapira said cotton farmers have many options that include harvesting the crop and keeping it to sell when ginners start to offer favourable prices.
“Cotton farmers have many options; they can harvest the crop, pack it and then sell whenever the prices are to their advantage. We are not talking about a perishable here, cotton can stay for years in your storeroom and nothing will affect it,” he said.
Some farmers, however, say the cost of cotton production this season was very high since there were many incidences of pests’ invasion in the fields.
“This year I incurred relatively high costs to produce the cotton. There were a lot of pest attacks on my field maybe because of the heavy rains. I had to spend a lot of money just for this crop to be ripe but the moment you get to the ginneries you will be shocked by the prices they are offering,” said Hlanganani Hasani, a Checheche-based cotton farmer.
Deputy Minister Marapira said the government, through the Agriculture Marketing Authority, was negotiating with ginneries and farmer representatives in coming up with a fair price.
“The government through the Agriculture Marketing Authority is undertaking price negotiations with ginneries and farmer representatives to come up with a price which makes sure those farmers go back to the field next season while ginneries don’t close down,” he said.
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