daniel chigunwe
Michael Tome
AGRICULTURE sector stakeholders have called for the application of proper agronomic practices in order to enhance productivity per unit area on farms, as Zimbabwe’s national maize average yield remains stifled.
The players are pushing for intensive agriculture practices to stimulate yield output for the country’s cereals production mainly maize as this is one of the major raw materials in agro-processing industry.
Findings from a recent crop assessment report, show that the national yield level has been improving from 0, 9 tonnes to two tonnes in the past five years.
In the 2020/21 season maize crop yield amounted to 2, 7 million tonnes, nearly 200 percent growth from the 907,628 tonnes produced in the previous season, ranking as one of the leading harvests since 2, 95 million tonnes that were realised in the 1984/85 season.
For the 2021/2022 season maize production stood at around 1, 6 million tonnes, a 43 percent dip from the prior season, while the national average maize yield stood at 0, 82 tonnes per hectare according to Agritex.
The issue is not peculiar to Zimbabwe but most parts of Africa that continue to record dismal national average yields, calling for mechanisms that enhance yields per unit area. In fact many southern African countries are facing food shortages with Zambia already ringing alarm bells.
South Africa, however, fares better than many, with a national average yield of roughly 5, 8 tonnes per hectare.
The case in point is that of Ukraine whose landmass is two percent the size of sub-Saharan Africa, but the recent conflict in Eastern Europe involving Russia and Ukraine led to an 18 percent rise in food prices in Africa.
The development had far-reaching consequences on food security and systems in Africa, given that more than a third of African countries depend heavily on Russia and Ukraine, cereals, fertiliser and industrial chemicals imports.
If Africa improves on its yield per unit area, it has the potential to grow for its own consumption and even for the export market.
Zimbabwe’s crop performance has lately been stemming from the increase in area planting as well as relatively good rainfall but not from respectable yields.
“There is a need for the adoption of good agronomic practices that are going to unlock the genetic potential of varieties on the market.
“No matter how much land you have now we want to know in terms of the population what you are producing per unit area, we are calling for intensified farming that is what is going to increase productivity, agronomic practices have to be right as well as the management,” said Wendy Madzura, SeedCo Zimbabwe head of agronomy services at the Climate Change adaptation conference held by the Business Weekly in partnership with the Financial Markets Indaba recently.
She indicated that although farmers have learned to choose suitable seed varieties that yield up to 14 – 15 tonnes per hectare, they still need to practice optimum management.
Optimum management entails a range of preparations that encompass a whole lot of things, including soil management, land preparation, nutrition, insect and pest management as well as weed control.
“Production per unit area needs to go up, we need to move and understand the unit production. Various initiatives were introduced by the Government in the last few years to grow production level per unit area, and commercial farmers are growingly committed to attaining this target yield per unit area,” she said.
She said SeedCo had gone on to craft productivity enhancement initiatives that include the eleven tonne club, which hinges on promoting competition among farmers, encouraging production in the process.
CBZ Bank Agro Yield chief operating officer, Simbarashe Mhungu, noted that production can be stimulated through various critical interventions like early distribution of inputs (in case of smart agriculture), and attractive producer prices.
In a survey, farmers continue to decry the late disbursement of inputs and at times higher input costs during the cropping season adding that farmers should maximise on the use of country’s dam capacity, which ranks amongst the highest in the world.
“We should ensure that we maximise our yield or get the yield commensurate to the capital deployed to this sector. We are so far off in utilising what we currently have because of a myriad of issues.
“We have not been able to maximise what we have, it means there is tremendous upside to this equation, and this question is how we get there. Therefore, we need to apply copious amounts of capital to begin supporting the lacking areas in this sector,” he said.
However, increased Government support for maize producers, as well as good rainfall during the current production season, have improved the prospects for a good cropping season in Zimbabwe in 2022/23.
Bongani Ndlovu