adminJohn Sigauke
IT is quite startling that our grain reserves have a deficit of 382 000 tonnes of maize.
The acting general manager of the Grain Marketing Board, Mr Lawrence Jasi revealed this sad news to the National Assembly recently. He said the Strategic Grain Reserve has 118 000 tonnes of maize against the normal volume of 500 000. It is frightening indeed!
What it means for Government is a call for an urgent shift of priority. The greater chunk of Government effort must be directed towards availing the staple crop for the nation.
The Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Cde Patrick Chinamasa must avail funds to GMB to enable it to pay farmers for the grains they sold to the later. Although the price being offered by GMB is comparatively quite handsome, the period taken to get payment is very discouraging. Most of the farmers went into 2014-2015 farming season without receiving their payments for the grains from the previous season.
The delay in payment has pushed most of the farmers to sell their grain to private buyers who have ready cash. However, the price is not enough to recover costs of inputs and production in general.
Therefore, the farmers are being short-changed by private buyers due to the delay of payment by GMB. Nonetheless, most of the farmers view private buyers as a better devil than GMB whose lucrative prices remains a pie in the sky.
Resourcing GMB should be uppermost in the government priority list. This is more so if we are to achieve the goals in the food security cluster of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset). I understand government is already procuring maize from neighbouring countries such as Zambia. This is a laudable undertaking.
However, government should put in places some systems that will avoid such reactionary measures. Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of the region and it has the potential to restore that status, provided there is a political goodwill. Our agriculture sector can be resuscitated and that recovery can subsequently boost economic growth. Zimbabwe was an agro-based economy before the biting illegal sanctions were imposed on it.
Since the climatic conditions are no longer favourable, irrigation is the way to go. Government must increase irrigation projects in the country. To begin with, the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) must be invigorated. The authority must work again and on its own, it can indubitably meet half of the national food requirement.
A mechanisation project such as the recent one sourced from Brazil, must be dedicated to ARDA.
Small-scale farmers must be assisted to get funding from financial institutions to start irrigation projects. It is a fact that communal and A1 farmers used to supply the bigger chunk of grains to GMB.
It will be a big incentive for these farmers if government recognise their contribution in this way.
Government must also make it mandatory for every farmer to grow a certain percentage of food crops on their farms.
Online Reporter