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The rains are starting and farmers are getting ready to plant, so like other dangerous pests lurking in the weeds, assorted criminals and con artists are working out how they can grab a share of the farmers’ money without doing a stroke of productive work.
The main types of criminals are known. There are those who are planning to divert inputs, and despite the many upgrades in the security of the systems in place to stop this, the ingenuity of thieves has few limits.
There are those who find expired seed, or who simply dye infertile seed scraped off a cob, and sell these to farmers who think they are getting a bargain. There are those who sell spoiled fertiliser, or some weird import from a criminal gang elsewhere, or who adulterate stolen fertiliser with useless filling. The list goes on.
This week the Fertiliser, Farm Seed and Remedies Institute offered some sensible advice, stressing that buying proper inputs from reputable dealers was not only generally safe, but also meant the farmers were getting what they paid for, not some fake garbage.
Farmers should look at the dealer’s registration certificate, and if the products are unfamiliar or have been privately imported, they can check that someone responsible did examine these and ensured that what is on the label is what is in the bag or bottle.
The Government has a number of checks in place to ensure that farmers do not waste their money, but farmers still have to show good sense and take care.
Of course even the most reputable shop could have some bent employee, so the institute’s inspectors, accompanied by police officers, does go round the registered retailers and dealers and checks that what they are selling is genuine and is the real article.
The need for the warning, and the results of the special offers, also emerged this week when four men were whisked into court on charges of receiving diverted fertiliser from the Presidential Inputs schemes, mixing this up and then adulterating it with ant-hill grains, repackaging it in bags with fake labelling stating it was a standard tobacco fertiliser, and then selling it, cheap.
The four are still to face trial, but already from what the police have seized there are a number of worrying questions. First farmers were being offered over 30 tonnes of fake fertiliser mixed with diverted fertiliser.
That is a lot, even when you take into account the useless additives. While the supplier of the Presidential Inputs has yet to be brought into a police station, it is fairly obvious that this sort of quantity must have come from a depot. There is far too much for it to have come from farmers selling their allocations as a lot of farmers would need to be involved and someone would have noticed and told the authorities.
There is obviously room here for a corruption probe and perhaps the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission needs to work with police to figure out the source of these inputs and then narrow down the investigation to the person who actually did the stealing or the diversion. We have had other cases, or to be more precise alleged and suspected cases, of people abusing their authority to have inputs diverted from the farmers who are supposed to get them, and it is clear that the Grain Marketing Board needs to make its systems better and for some sort of auditing to be put in place so that if there is a hole in the allocations, it can be found quickly and those responsible arrested.
There have been so many major improvements to ensure that all inputs are used properly, starting with the farmers only getting these when their backbreaking land preparation has been done to a satisfactory standard, and depot managers having to ensure that all approved farmers do get what they have earned, that what remains is largely an audit job.
This is to ensure that what was said to have happened did happen and that everything can be accounted for.
The rest is largely what the Fertiliser, Farm Seed and Remedies Institute was set up to police.
Farmers need to be careful, and need to remember that there are no real bargains out there. If the price is way below the normal, and those are at least checked out, to avoid profiteering, then what is being bought is also going to be way below normal in quality or functionality.
The old adage that the buyer should beware is applicable, and common sense is required.
On the other hand the two farmers who felt they were being conned in the latest fiddle did contact the police as soon as they suspected something was amiss, and the police to their credit responded promptly.
The delivery chain was followed back and, according to police and court reports, those responsible were caught in highly suspicious activity.
The police appear to have sensibly distinguished between those who were just doing a job, moving the goods or filling the bags, and those allegedly running the show.
It is difficult, sometimes anyway, to prove that a person doing certain things, or supplying certain products, like sacks of anthill clay particles or printing fake bag labelling, knew that they were participating in a scam or abetting a crime.
Just how far someone in business has to go to check out if their customer is a criminal, or if their boss is up to no good, is difficult to set.
But it would be useful if those approached by con artists and criminals, the farmers offered a bargain, did inform the authorities or the police when the approach was made.
The Fertiliser, Farm Seed and Remedies Institute appears ready to check out dubious sources of supply and take a far higher profile role.
The legitimate and registered businesses that do deal in farming inputs and chemicals, and pay their modest fees that cover the costs of checking them out, also became more active and passed on any reports they might receive or hear about.
We have been weeding out these sort of people in recent years, but with the increase in the scale of farming and the profits that are now being made by farmers the temptation to prey on farmers with money is obviously growing.
We need to be more vigilant, and farmers especially should take ever more care to ensure that they are not being conned.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter