Giving farmer fish, silting the river he fishes

support schemes rolled out by different players, Government included, year in year out.
Their destination is the resource-starved and poor farmer who has perennially struggled to finance operations to produce and feed family and where possible, send the surplus to the market.
The free input schemes are essentially welfare issues designed to assist the poor and vulnerable families and everyone acknowledges that.
Observations, however, reveal that besides empowering the poor farmers, the schemes seem to deliberately weave their way past the markets and industries that should naturally be in a symbiotic relationship with farmers in need.
The accurate summation of the process is that industry remains trapped in a situation in which it is suffocated from producing as some of the inputs come from sources that may not necessarily be local.
This means that industry is not capacitated to employ. In other words, free inputs render local production of inputs non-economically viable to the point that a part of the agro-industry becomes less functional yet the need for more free inputs every year remains unchanged.
Some of the inputs arrive late and they are of no value to the farmer and the country.
Non-governmental organisations, for instance, are involved in most of these schemes yet in most cases they do not pause to think of the local industry when they bring them.
It may be necessary for Government to treat their participation like any other businesses that has to be licensed, monitored and made to work in co-ordination with Government and other local businesses.
In this case, even the Government must also monitor the distribution of its own free inputs.
At worst the Government should distribute subsidised locally manufactured inputs since it is common knowledge that organisations such as the European Union have always heavily subsidised their inputs thus distorting the global agricultural market.
At a recent seminar in Harare, Dr Tonderai Makumire of Aid Effectiveness Group (AEG) commented that there was need for the Government to clearly distinguish between economic issues and welfare issues.
He added that there should be clear criteria for issuing free inputs acknowledging the need to assist the poor and vulnerable families.
“Humanitarian assistance and Government projects are distorting and confusing the market.
“While they are necessary to specified beneficiaries like the resource poor and vulnerable families, because it is a reality that we have the poor among us who need our support, the Government should be able to distinguish between economic and welfare objectives.
“In most cases those who receive free inputs will sell their produce at any price even to unscrupulous dealers who in most cases pay too little or no cash at all,” said Dr Makumire.
Dr Makumire said this sad scenario had been unfolding over the years as industry was left in the cold while unscrupulous buyers bought most or all of the produce from farmers yet the produce’s destination afterwards has remained a secret.
Rather, the more logical situation would have been one in which donors of inputs buy from local manufacturers while the farmers also sell their produce to local industry to keep both parties floating.
“Free inputs in a way tend to distort the agro-market,” Dr Makumire said.
Dr Makumire is not alone in his school of thought.
Many other agricultural sector stakeholders also feel that free agricultural inputs being handed out by Government and non-governmental organisations were distorting and confusing the sector’s market.
One analyst with National Foods, Mr Garry Booth, once retorted that free handouts were affecting sales in agro input producing companies resulting in the firms restricting their production levels to under 50 percent capacity utilisation.
“We are now in a de-regulated economy where agro-based production industry is now faced with a challenge. Our market is now used to accessing free inputs even when these are not available.
“You will realise that last year we were selling a bag of fertiliser for US$27 and then the Grain Marketing Board sold at something like US$7 a bag while some NGOs handed out the inputs for free.
“This is actually killing the market as the farmers will not buy the inputs hence the industry remains under capacitated to produce at full throttle.
“This will then result in us remaining trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty because if the industry does not produce, then it also does not employ,” said Mr Booth.
In some cases industry has managed to produce some of the inputs but they have failed to court buyers leaving them stranded.
The inputs will therefore be just stacked in warehouses yet industry needs to sell and recover costs incurred during production.
Zimbabwe is recovering from a decade long economic and political crisis and there is need for the economic players to embark on a national restocking exercise as most retail and wholesale outlets had dried up due to a number of factors including high inflation.
But this recovery will be possible if players in the sector compliment each other setting the stage for a win-win situation.
The resource poor farmers need to be capacitated especially in the wake of the liquidity crunch afflicting the economy while industry needs raw materials to function viably.
Government’s involvement in the procurement and distribution of free inputs is both inevitable and contentious – inevitable in the sense that it has to come to the rescue of its people and contentious in the sense that industry and markets will bleed.
The bottom line, however, is that farmers need that propping to produce enough for their granaries as well as for the market from where the produce will make its way to industry.