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Harmony Agere Extra Reporter—
LOCAL farmers have expressed hope for bumper yields due to good rains being received countrywide as well as improved preparations for the 2016-2017 cropping season.
Although crop assessment and other systematic agricultural surveys are yet to be done, there is general consensus within the farming community that good yields in hard soil areas are almost certain this year.
Farmers also believe that it has been a long time since the country received these amounts of rainfall.
“The good old times are definitely back,” said Mr Wonder Chabikwa, who is the president of Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Association.
“It has been quiet a long time since we received good rains we are receiving now.
If it continues like this until the end of the season, we can only expect bumper harvests, particularly in areas with heavy soils,” he said.
Mr Chabikwa said due to current rainfalls, some people who had developed a habit of planting in wetlands have since abandoned the practice due to water logging.
He however lamented that there wasn’t enough fertilizer to complement the good rains, adding that this could result in leaching in light soil areas.
“The challenge with high amount of rainfall is that you need more fertiliser,” he said.
“This is particularly so in light soil areas where leaching is a challenge. So to deal with leaching, you need to dress the soil with urea which is however not accessible to most farmers at the moment.”
Apart from leaching, Mr Chabikwa said weeds, water logging and pests are some of the challenges that come with heavy rains.
He said farmers could solve drainage problems by creating contour ridges to drain water as well as prevent the washing away of the soil.
“lf all of these challenges are addressed, I can confidently say we are definitely going to have improved harvests, if not a bumper one,” said Mr Chabikwa.
Zimbabwe Farmers Union director, Mr Paul Zakariya concurred with Mr Chabikwa but warned that good yields still depend on continued good rains, access to inputs and a variety of other factors that have not been addressed yet.
“We can only say that the yield is going to be better but there are still a few hurdles that we have to go past,” he said.
“We have not yet done crop assessment so we don’t know what crop was put on what hectares so it’s almost difficult to say exactly what we are most likely to get.
“We still need the rains to continue like this, we still need
fertiliser, especially if the rains are good like this; we still need a lot of things to have the harvest we all desire. But generally it will be definitely good.”
Mr Zakariya also reckoned water logging as a potential predicament, saying in Mashonaland West in areas like Raffingora and Mhangura, the risk of water logging is growing.”
The Zimbabwe Indigenous Women Farmers Association Trust president, Mrs Depinah Nkomo, said the rains are so good such that if they don’t dress their maize crop with fertiliser soon, there could be a disaster.
“As women in farming, we are very happy with the rains that we have received so far and we are expecting good harvests,” Mrs Nkomo said.
“As we speak, the rains have not given us enough time here in Chegutu to go to the field but it is better that way than to have less rainfall.”
Just like her colleagues, Mrs Nkomo lamented the availability of fertiliser.
“With these good rains you need an adequate supply of fertiliser, but we don’t have it. Even if you go to the shops to buy on your own they don’t have it, you have to go to the
manufacturers to get fertiliser,” she said.
“They should at least make the product available in retail shops to create convenience because sometimes it takes the whole day waiting for fertiliser at the manufacturers’.”
Manufacturers contracted to
supply fertiliser under the command agriculture scheme last week told a Parliament portfolio committee on agriculture that they were struggling to meet their targets due to lack of foreign currency to import raw
materials.
The Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company, which is one of the contractors, is believed to have delivered only 20 000 tonnes of compound D fertilizer, just half of what is it expected to provide.
Mrs Nkomo said apart from fertiliser they are having challenges with weed and pest control.
Zimbabwe has for the past decade been hit by successive droughts, only recording adequate rains on a few occasions.
Last year, the country was hit by an El Nino induced drought which left about 4 million people food insecure.
The good rains therefore come as a relief not only for crop production but to fill up water bodies that had since dried up.
The drying up of Kariba Dam last year epitomised the decade of troubled rainfall in the southern African region.
Government has now been urged to improve water harvesting infrastructure so that in times of drought, the country will be able to sustain
agriculture through irrigation.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter