adminPermanent Secretary for Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Mr Ngoni Masoka said it was baffling why agro-industrial companies were reluctant to fund the production of horticultural crops.
“Contract farming should not only be for tobacco and cotton. It must be for all these other products as well. Horticulture, including potatoes, vegetables, carrots and everything required by local companies, corporates should deliberately go and fund the production,” said Mr Masoka.
This follows the realisation that the country’s horticultural industry has been on a free fall over the last decade due, in the main, to lack of funding while local supermarkets were always filled with imported greens.
Agriculture constitutes over 50 percent of Zimbabwe’s export earnings and accounts for between 15 percent and 18 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
“Why are we funding farmers on 90 days instead of 12 months, three years for short-term loans and three to five years for the medium-term loans?
“Why is horticulture not up there (as is the case with Kenya?). Why are we not getting the likes of the agro-industry firms that require potatoes such as Innscor Africa (Zimbabwe) funding the farmer to produce for them?” he said.
Mr Masoka said that Zimbabwe had all the attributes critical for success in horticulture, but is surpassed by less endowed countries like Kenya.
The East African country rakes in over US$1,2 billion annually from horticultural exports to mostly Europe compared to Zimbabwe’s US$45 million.
Horticulture is one of the sectors seriously affected by limited and expensive funding. Mr Masoka said Government also needed to take deliberate steps to finance agriculture to ensure it becomes competitive globally.
Mr Masoka said Zimbabwe was an agriculture- driven economy and the performance of the sector had implications the on the growth of the economy. As such, there was need for deliberate financial support to agriculture.
Government is concerned that high interest rates were constraining production, making local crops and products more expensive than imports.
“How can you have interest rates going all the way to 50 percent in a dollarised economy? We have a paper on the cost of funding and what
the real issues are comparing to Zambia, Malawi and South Africa,” he said.
“Our agriculture cannot compete against the likes of Zambia and Malawi because their governments have supported the farmers,” Mr Masoka said.
leeroy