adminFrom George Maponga in Masvingo
“Farming is a business, if you take it as a hobby definitely you will fail.” These are words of trailblazing commercial sugar cane farmer in the Lowveld, Ms Tsitsi Machingauta, who is making a mark in the capital-intensive but highly lucrative cane farming industry.
Ms Machingauta, a devout and unapologetic proponent of empowerment of women in agriculture, runs a 46 hectare sugar cane farm at Section 14, Subdivision 60 of Triangle Ranch in Chiredzi.
Her swashbuckling and verdant cane crop at various stages of maturity points to the determination of a single mother of three to excel in farming, hitherto a field often regarded as a preserve of men.
“I have always believed in the empowerment of women and I strongly believe that gender should and is not a limitation to farming that is why I have been vigorously pushing for the empowerment of women in Agriculture all along,” she said.
“I was part of a number of women organisations founded to advance the interests of women in agriculture such as Zimbabwe Women in Agriculture and Women’s Farming Syndicate all of which were primarily anchored on the need to open avenues for women to softly land in farming.”
Ms Machingauta said she was part of a delegation under the Zimbabwe Women in Agriculture banner that went to the Italian city of Reminei near Bologna in May this year to showcase various agricultural products, which are proudly Zimbabwean.
She said she regards her sugar cane farming venture as one of her strategic business units (SBUs) which all revolved around agriculture. She is also into packaging of traditional foods such as dried collards (mufushwa) and local chicken soups all of which are tailored for the export market. The traditional foods are packaged in Domboshava.
But it is in sugar cane farming where Ms Machingauta seems to be expending much of her energy and time at the moment considering potentially lucrative returns.
The 33-year-old beneficiary of Government’s land reform programme saying her cane farming venture was growing in leaps and bounds.
“You start small and grow big, that is how it is and I am happy that when I was allocated my plot in 2016 my average yield per hectare was 89 tonnes of raw sugar and this year I am expecting the yield to jump to 129 tonnes per hectare.”
Ms Machingauta paid tribute to Government for its vision to embark on the epoch-making land reform programme saying if carefully executed, sugar cane farming could engender very high returns.
“Farming should be taken as a business, if you take it as a hobby definitely you will fail. On average you invest about $2 500 per hectare of cane up to maturity of the crop and you get a return of about $10 000 from that, which is very attractive.
“The cane crop also takes about a year before it is harvested and this entails that farmers should be carefully manage their cash-flow so that they are able to last through the season,” said Ms Machingauta.
The affable cane farmer attributed her success in the labour and capital intensive cane farming to her upbringing when her
father always made sure she and her siblings went through the conveyor belt of rural life when they were young.
“My father always made sure that during every school holiday we would go to our rural area in Gutu where I was exposed to a lot of things like tending the fields, fetching firewood and even heading cattle and bathing in rivers and streams. That experience moulded me into the person I am today and I am grateful to my dad for that,” she said.
Ms Machingauta said her cane field had two crop varieties ZN10 and N14 with the former covering 5 hectares and the latter the rest. She said ZN10 has high returns particularly in terms of Estimated Sugar .
Recovery (sucrose) which can be as high as 15 percent while N14 is generally known for its resilience.
“I went for a six-week training course at the Zimbabwe Sugar Research Station (near Buffalo Range in Chiredzi) were taught how to grow sugar cane commercially and I am very happy with the level of knowledge that I have so far acquired on sugar cane farming. I also want my three beautiful daughters to be acquainted with cane farming and I always make it a point that I bring them to the farm during the holidays,” she poured.
To show her seriousness about her money-spinning venture, Ms Machingauta is currently developing 3 hectares of fallow land where she has already planted cane and has plans to even expand more.
The only blemish on Ms Machingauta’s farm is its location on the margins of cane plantations making her crop susceptible to regular visits by wild animals particularly baboons and monkeys, primates dearly in love with the sweet sucrose from cane.
“I am now contemplating introducing another cane variety that is not easily eaten by monkeys and baboons because they are doing considerable harm to our operations but we are managing at the moment and the future looks bright,” she said.
She says because sugar cane has up to 20 known by-products farmers should benefit more throughout the sugar value chain.
Ms Machingauta said Government is supposed to make sure the land reform programme fully economically empowers preciously-marginalised Zimbabweans by making sure they are not short-changed in the marketing of the crop.
Monopoly in sugar cane milling by Zimbabwe’s sole sugar miller Tongaat Hulett Zimbabwe, she says, should be the first step in making sure cane farmers fully benefit from the crop.
Online Reporter