Maize on demand

By Samuel Kadungure Farming Matters
THE obligation to feed the nation’s fast-growing population is a mammoth task that Zimbabwean farmers are failing to fulfil as domestic maize demand outstrips local production leading to increasing reliance on imports to bridge the gap.This is despite the fact that Zimbabwe is known for its fertile soils, water resources, expertise, demand for exports and even a conducive climate, notwithstanding the unpredictability of rainfall patterns within seasons.

Worrisome is the fact that our nation faces food crisis now whereas at independence it was self-sufficient. That most farmers are poor, lack enough food, sufficient money to meet health, education, essential services and other basic needs and own few productive assets proves that the once revered agriculture sector has been blighted by debilitating challenges requiring immediate remedial action.

Maize is a strategic and staple food crop, whose production must be every farmer’s responsibility. As a nation we cannot leave maize production to chance.

The nation requires at least 1,4 million metric tonnes of grain for consumption and 350 000 tonnes for livestock and other uses, a target that sadly in the past we failed to achieve as a nation.

Local seed companies, through their research units, have consistently developed high yielding seed varieties while government on the other hand provided extension services, inputs such as seed, fertilisers and machinery like tractors to capacitate resource-poor farmers across the country, but maize production has remained dismally low compared to other crops.

Maize and wheat imports since 1999 have chewed $3,3 billion, according to the Bankers’ Association of Zimbabwe, and this has contributed significantly to the widening of the current account deficit to $4 billion last year from $3,6 billion in 2012.

A 2012 report on Zimbabwe’s agricultural reconstruction, jointly commissioned by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and the French Agency for Development (AFD), listed deteriorating infrastructure for the marketing and movement of produce, and the limited access of farmers to finance, among the constraints to productivity. It noted that shortages of fuel and power, in addition to poor training and limited agricultural extension services, were also hampering food production.

Lack of adequate funding, poor research-extension-farmer linkage, low private investments in maize research and development, and high human capital turnover are problems that must receive adequate attention and resolve if a new way forward is to be charted.

The failure by the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) to pay farmers for their grain on time, in recent years has short-circuited the ability of small-scale farmers to generate cash flow to fund agricultural inputs for the following season.

Farmers must be paid on a timely basis, fully and fairly.

A large majority of farmers abandoned growing maize and other grains, turning instead to tobacco because of attractive pricing and orderly marketing of the leaf.

This season the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) revealed that it has registered at least 13 000 new growers — with Manicaland having 2 119 new registrations, Mashonaland Central 3 641, Mashonaland East 2 104, Mashonaland West 4 890, Masvingo 125, Matabeleland six and Midlands 142.

Most of the new registrations are coming from communal producers, and are being lured into the tobacco sector by contract farming and rich pickings of the cured leaf.

The stats shows that 8 100 are communal farmers, 4 164 having registered under A1, 385 under A2 and 370 under the small-scale commercial sector.

These are the same small-scale farmers that formed the backbone of the country’s food security providing about 70 percent of maize, who are now trying their hand at tobacco because nearly all of them had been “severely affected” by non-payment or delayed payment for their produce from the GMB.

If Zimbabwe wants to increase maize production, then it should lure private players into the maize sector. It must come up with a structure similar to that of the viable tobacco sector where private players play a leading role bankrolling the operations of the farmers as well as offer a competitive market for their produce.

The drop in the national maize output is linked to the drastic decrease of the area under maize in the commercial sector and steep reduction in productivity — from an average of 4.2 tonnes/ha to 1.5 tonnes/ha. The reduction in productivity has mainly been due to the controlled pricing of maize, which is not viable as it fails to keep pace with rising input costs and hyperinflation. The smallholder communal sector, however, remained stable, with an increase of the area under production, but with a low, stagnating 700-800kg/ha productivity.

“In 2009, the national production of maize (mainly by smallholders) was 130 percent higher than in 2007/08. The increase in production is related to the significant extension of the area under production, from 1.2 million ha to 1.6 million ha.

This was combined with a favourable rainfall pattern and a relaxation of market controls on input prices. Combined with input supply from donors and the Government, this ensured a moderate availability of seed, fertiliser, fuel and draught power. The average yield was 800kg/ha, which compares unfavourably with the 1990s’ ten-year average of 1.25 tonnes/ha”.

The period between 2000 and 2008 saw a steady decline in the production volumes of staple commodities and increasing reliance on food aid and imports from neighbouring countries.

For instance, in 2008/09, maize production fell to a little less than half a million tonnes, down from its ten-year average of 1.6 million tonnes in the previous decade. During the past decade, national maize production has averaged around 1.1 million tonnes, with production peaking in only two seasons: 2001/02, at 1.5 million tonnes and 2004/05 at 1.7 million tonnes. Extreme levels of less than a million tonnes were experienced in the 2002 and 2005 droughts, but the worst year of the decade was 2008/09, when the country produced only 0.57 million tonnes.

Rural development expert Professor Joseph Kamuzhanje said unless Government put in place policies and strategies that enable people to produce food the country will continue facing starvation.

“A lot has been said about the development of irrigation schemes to allow farmers to produce food. That is the way to go. The moment people are able to produce food, all these problems become inconsequential,” said Prof Kamuzhanje.

The Manicaland chiefs’ rep in Senate, Chief Mbaimbai Chiduku, said: “The Government must capacitate farmers and develop irrigation schemes so that the country stops importing grain. The producer price is also a factor as most farmers are ditching maize citing viability problems,” said Sen Chief Chiduku.

Others said Government should develop strategic policies to promote quality seed production and breathe life into fertiliser companies in the country so that small-scale farmers can acquire the required quantities of quality seeds and fertilisers at affordable prices and are also able to plant maize in time.

Government should develop a policy which will help farmers to access financial assistance from banks or lure private maize contracting companies to boost production. No farmer can produce meaningfully without a deep pocket to finance operations and related to this is the need to develop a strategy of helping maize farmers to get reliable local and international markets for their produce.

GMB, whose primary role is to ensure national food security, should cease playing a goalkeeping role. It must source financial resources either from Government or through partnerships so that it finances and promotes grain production — as well as serve as a ready and viable market for the produce.

Needless to say, Government must continue providing an enabling environment through clear policy goals and commensurate investments in infrastructure, mechanisation, training, education and information technology which are public good assets that have in the past proven to be important prerequisites for maize productivity growth. This requires wisdom and vision. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director-General José Graziano da Silva last week said that global peace and sustainable development cannot be achieved without ending hunger.

“Food security might not always be our first concern, but it should be,” said the FAO chief during the “Delivering Zero Hunger — Demonstrating Impact”, a UN General Assembly side event, co-hosted by the governments of the Netherlands, Ireland and Mexico; FAO; the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

“While world hunger figures have declined, there are still 805 million people who are chronically undernourished,” Graziano da Silva said, citing figures from the recently released UN State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2014) report.

He noted that globally, the proportion of chronically undernourished people has fallen by around 40 percent since 1990 and that 63 developing countries have already reached the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) hunger target of reducing by half the proportion of hungry people by the end of 2015.

“With less than 500 days left to achieve the MDGs, there is a sense of urgency and, therefore, requires a stepping up of efforts,” he said, referring to the hunger target’s looming deadline.

He also urged countries to take the “extra step” and take up the UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge which seeks to eradicate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition worldwide. This “should not remain a dream. It is a vision that is within our reach,” the FAO chief said. Agriculture Minister Dr Joseph Made disputed assertions linking the decline in maize production to an increase in the number of tobacco growers.

“Tobacco does not compromise the production of any other crop. In fact all farmers who produce tobacco also produce maize. It is a fallacy that tobacco has taken the space of other crops. It is a myth to say tobacco is competing with other grain crops,” argued Dr Made.

“In fact tobacco produces residual nitrogen which benefits the grain crop, especially maize.  Former white commercial farmers thought blacks cannot grow tobacco — but our farmers have done so well in the shortest possible time achieving right now 217 million kilogrammes of cured tobacco against 237 million kg achieved by whites. Can you imagine $700 million going straight into the pockets of black farmers? It is those who want to undermine the land reform programme who say, tobacco is competing with grain crops.

“There is nothing like that. It is a lie. That is a myth, those crops complement each other. When tobacco farmers sell their produce, they buy inputs of all other crops at once. In the past white farmers who produced tobacco were the same who grew maize and had livestock and the winter crop,” said Dr Made.

He added that adverse weather conditions experienced across the country during past years, along with the unavailability and high costs of agricultural inputs, have contributed to the high levels of food insecurity in Zimbabwe due to the poor maize harvests.

Maize crops need an average monthly precipitation of 100 to 140 mm. The crop takes at least three and half months to reach optimal growth and for a maize crop to produce well total precipitation of 301 to 600 mm is needed during its life cycle, particularly in mono-cropping. When maize, regardless of variety, is inter-cropped, more precipitation is necessary if higher average yields are to be realised.

Agritex need to encourage and conscientise farmers to adopt new technologies like conservation farming in place of traditional methods because chances are that the more intensively a farmer is exposed to its activities, the more prepared and willing they should be to adopt new practices.