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Charity Ruzvidzo Business Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union (ZCFU) projects low cotton output this year due to an unfavourable price the crop fetched in the previous marketing season. ZCFU president Wonder Chabikwa told Business Chronicle last week that in the 2013/14 farming season, a number of their members had abandoned growing the crop turning their focus to crops such as tobacco that were better rewarding.
He said as a result of the shift by the farmers, his union had revised this year’s cotton output from 200 million kilogrammes to 140 million kg.
“We had a targeted output of 200 million kilogrammes of cotton, however we expect this to decline to 140 million kilogrammes because most cotton farmers were discouraged to farm this season by the low prices the crop was going for last season.
“The previous marketing season saw cotton price pegged at 35 cents a kg for the lowest grade and 70 cents a kg for the highest grade. Such a price structure did not enable the farmers to break even,” he said.
However, he said during this year’s marketing season cotton price had been increased to 50 cents a kg for the lowest grade.
Chabikwa said many farmers had migrated to growing tobacco as it was more lucrative.
“More farmers this season registered for tobacco because prices of the crop were better, the farmer is sustainable and viable,” he said.
He urged the government to gazette cotton price as there was random pricing.
“What is happening now is cotton ginners agree on a price with farmers on a personal basis leading to exploitation of the farmers by the ginners as they set a low price.”
In the 2013/14 season, cotton production increased by 31 percent to 190,000 in 2013-14 season due to good rains the country received.
Before the adoption of a multicurrency system in February 2009, the white gold was one of the largest sources of foreign currency for Zimbabwe.
However, recently production of the crop has faced constraints among others due to lack of latest technology.
Zimbabwe is yet to officially adopt genetically modified (GM) crops, which experts say would see the country significantly enhancing its cotton output if the farmers were given a green signal to grow Biotechnology cotton.
About 200,000 small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe are engaged in cotton growing and most of these farmers get inputs under different contract farming schemes, which provide farming inputs to cotton growers, who fail to get funds from banks and financial institutions as they lack collateral.
Last year, a total of 12 cotton ginners extended around $32 million to individual cotton growers, mainly through the supply of inputs.
In 1999-2000 season, Zimbabwe produced a record 353,000 tonnes of cotton, but farmers’ interest declined thereafter as prices began to go down.
Online Reporter