New cash deal for farmers

millers. We have already agreed on prices. The decision is to pay the farmers who have already delivered to GMB.”
The country needs over 500 000 tonnes of grain for strategic reserves.
Minister Made said Minister Biti on Tuesday agreed to release the money.
“One hopes that with the agreement reached yesterday (Tuesday), the money will be sent to GMB for payment. But you know, when you have that situation sometimes you are reluctant to announce that because of the failure before to deliver on those promises from a financing point of view.
“We are cautious now as agriculture to say until the money has been physically transferred otherwise I will give false hope but I do hope that with what we concluded with the Minister of Finance yesterday, something must happen,” he said.
Minister Made said this while giving oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Water, Lands and Resettlement yesterday.
Chikomba Central legislator Mr Moses Jiri (MDC-T) chairs the committee.
Minister Made said farmers were likely to be affected by lack of top dressing fertiliser.
He said Sable Chemicals was not producing fertiliser because it had been switched off by Zesa.
Minister Made said commercial farmers had been excluded from benefiting from Government subsidised top dressing fertiliser because of the shortages.
He said local fertiliser producers had been given the green light to import top dressing fertiliser, but only managed to bring in 23 percent of the required quantities.
They claimed they did not have money. Minister Made said instead of 72 700 tonnes of top dressing required, the companies only delivered 15 700 tonnes.
He said the companies only managed to import 3 800 tonnes of Urea.
The committee questioned Government’s wisdom in subsidising inputs for the private sector.
Goromonzi North MP Cde Paddy Zhanda said there was no need for Government to subsidise commercial farmers when they could venture into contract farming with the private sector.
Government, he said, should only focus on subsidising communal farmers who delivered their produce to the GMB.
“Isn’t it reasonable and fair given the background that we deal precisely with securitisation of commercial farms so that they can borrow loans from banks?
“The background to this is that only those who are in influential positions get inputs. We are unhappy with the current subsidy system where those who have are subsidised ahead of those who don’t have,” Cde Zhanda said.
The committee also requested to see the names of all beneficiaries of the farm mechanisation programme.
The legislators said they were not opposed to the programme, but did not want to see the same people who got A2 farmers also benefiting from inputs and farming implements at the expense of the poor.
The committee also wanted to know when farmers who got farm implements under the programme will pay for what they received.