Online Reporter
Obert Chifamba
Agri-Insight
ILLICIT trade in fake agricultural inputs is fast assuming the tag of a clear and present danger to crop farming with illegal sellers now abandoning their traditional haunts in street alleys and car boots for the veneer of legitimacy offered by retail shops.
This shift presents a significant escalation in the risk to farmers, the integrity of the agriculture sector and the challenges faced by regulatory authorities with counterfeit inputs increasingly being sold in some ‘retail shops’ making it harder for the unsuspecting buyer to discern genuine products from counterfeits.
Note that I put the phrase “retail shops” in quotes because some of the so-called retail shops might also be operating illegally, if recent discoveries by Harare City Council that many businesses have been operating without licences is anything to go by.
Essentially, this change in tactics by those peddling the fake inputs presents new challenges for farmers, regulators, and legitimate businesses alike, requiring a multi-faceted approach to ensure the integrity of the agricultural supply chain is retained.
In fact, it demands a reassessment of current strategies for detecting and preventing the sale of the fake inputs. It is becoming increasingly for the unschooled eye to pick differences between genuine and fake products, which requires authorities to urgently come up with ways to counter the menace.
On the one hand, the counterfeit inputs pose a real insidious threat to farmers and the agriculture industry, jeopardising crop yields, undermining economic stability, and risking food security.
The increasing sophistication of these fake products not only deceives unsuspecting farmers but also threatens the integrity of legitimate businesses and regulatory efforts aimed at ensuring safe and effective agricultural practices.
This sudden development has increased the challenge farmers and regulatory authorities face in trying to tell the differences between genuine and counterfeits.
It also makes it very difficult to retain the old strategies for sniffing out the vice and makes it prudent for all stakeholders to change their ways of doing business.
Legitimate businesses trading in the same products that are being counterfeited now face unfair competition and run the risk of being pushed out of business until this problem is contained.
Maybe, efforts to tame this counterfeit product madness might make some impact if stakeholders can successfully rope in technological innovations that may make it easy to detect fake from genuine products.
What complicates the matter at hand is that the fraudsters use the correct and genuine packaging materials, which makes it only possible for buyers to discover the chicanery when they open the product later.
Just recently, I boarded a kombi to my rural home, Mhondoro, and when the driver was sorting out luggage in the boot, he discovered that one passenger had bought two 50-kilogramme bags of sand packaged in Windmill Fertiliser Company branded packs.
The anomaly was given away by one of the bags that got torn when it hit a sharp protrusion from part of the luggage.
The passenger had bought the fake fertiliser from a shop that sells airtime and many other commodities.
She quickly rushed with the sand samples to the shop and the sellers immediately came and collected their loot and returned the lady’s cash.
This was just an isolated incident, which was discovered before the buyer had travelled to her destination.
I can bet my last dollar that many people have fallen victim to such acts of fraud and in most cases the sellers do not operate from the same spot to enable victims to come back and recover their monies or make reports to the police and result in the arrest of the culprits.
In recent times, cases of fraud involving counterfeit products have been on the increase resulting in farmers suffering huge financial losses with efforts to boost food security also taking a huge knock in the process.
The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the fraudsters are now hiding in plain sight, which makes it very difficult for the unsuspecting individual to smell their presence.
In one of the biggest of such cases, police in Harare impounded nearly eight tonnes of fake and uncertified maize seed with an estimated street value of between US$16 000 and US$20 000 in October 2022.
The stockpile was found in a house in the Avondale area, where it was being made in a makeshift factory.
Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi then told the media that 13 cases involving counterfeit seed weighing 7, 8 tonnes had been reported and were pending at the courts.
This time around, peddlers of counterfeits have become more sophisticated with some conventional hardware shops and companies being turned into corridors for the illicit trade.
Many unsuspecting farmers have since fallen victim to these nefarious activities when they thought they were securing proper inputs for the new season.
These fraudsters usually prey on desperate farmers moving to secure inputs against the run of time. It seems many farmers are now in the habit of leaving it until the last few days to start making serious preparations for a novel season.
In so doing, they always throw caution to the wind and also go for less expensive products.
Farmers who do not prepare for new seasons on time are always in a hurry to secure inputs and begin sowing at the same time with those who would have taken their time to procure inputs ahead of the season. This is the opportunity these unscrupulous dealers will be waiting to seize and push fake seeds into the markets.
Sellers of counterfeit products in most cases use a green colourant to change the colour of maize seed, for instance.
They pack it in 5kg, 10kg and 50kg packs before branding with names of any prominent seed houses they might just pick.
This duplicitous act is derailing the Government’s efforts to alleviate hunger in line with the National Development Strategy 1 while the economy is also taking a battering in silence.
The has been enforcing provisions of the Seed Act, Chapter 19:13 and ensuring that the law takes its course on anyone found selling fake or counterfeit maize seed but this does not seem deterrent enough to stop the vice.
At this point it may be necessary for Government to review penalties meted out on those found guilty of flouting the Seed Act and make them more punitive.
It seems the penalties are on the lenient side and therefore not painful enough to stop perpetrators from repeating the crime.
People convicted of selling counterfeit seed only pay between ZWL$650 and ZWL$1 000, which is nowhere near what deterrent punishments should be.
The public should also act responsibly and report people they observe packaging and selling counterfeit maize seed.
They can report on the following numbers – Harare Operations 0242 748836, Bulawayo Operations 029 885479, National Complaints Desk 0242 703631 and Whatsapp 0172 800 197
