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Marvelous Moyo Gwanda Correspondent
FARMERS in Matabeleland South Province are battling to plant wheat for this winter season due to unavailability of inputs such as wheat seed and fertiliser at local Grain Marketing Board (GMB) depots. In an interview, the Matabeleland South provincial agronomist Mr Innocent Nyathi said communal farmers in the province faced a myriad of challenges in planting wheat, chief among them being the absence of inputs at the GMB depots around the districts in the province.
“Our farmers are battling to plant their winter crop because of various challenges. We have targeted to plant 1 341hectares of wheat but by last week our farmers in the province had managed to plant 436,85ha because it was hard for farmers to get seeds and fertilisers.
“The seed companies are not coming forward to support the farmers in bringing the inputs closer to the farmers,” he said.
Mr Nyathi said farmers were forced to travel as far as Bulawayo to purchase their wheat crop inputs – seed and fertiliser.
“Some irrigation schemes have strong warehouses which seed companies could utilise to store their inputs for sale to the farmers so as to avoid farmers travelling long distances to access inputs.
“Other farmers have resorted to planting wheat seed from previous harvests that have been replanted for more than three seasons thereby compromising the crop yield,” he said.
The situation of the farmers has been worsened by the fact that the Government had also stopped supporting winter wheat production after Finance Minister Tendai Biti failed to allocate a budget for winter wheat production as he said wheat was a commercial crop and not a crop for poor farmers.
“The Government should consider revisiting its budgets and support winter wheat production in a similar way as it supports summer cropping.
“Although planting of wheat has continued, our farmers will not meet the target as they should stop planting at the end of this month,” said Mr Nyathi.
Insiza district had targeted to plant 150ha but has so far planted 82,85ha while 44ha of the 362ha target has been planted in Gwanda district.
Mangwe has planted 51,7ha of the 256ha targeted whereas Bulilima had targeted 30ha but has so far planted 2,8ha.
Umzingwane has planted its five hectare target while Matobo has planted 24,5ha of its 100ha target hectarage.
In Beitbridge, 226ha has been planted from a target figure of 438ha.
“The low hectarage that was planted under wheat is also a result of non functional irrigation schemes and the washing away of the water well points by recent floods in some irrigation schemes. Some of the irrigation equipment was also vandalised.
“Concerted efforts should be made to resuscitate idle irrigation schemes so as to improve food security in the province,” said Mr Nyathi.
He also said high electricity bills and water charges by Zesa and Zinwa were other contributing factors to low winter wheat production as farmers were reluctant to plant the crop.
“The bills are too heavy on farmers and we feel that water and electricity costs should be revisited as our farmers are being charged commercial rates which do not apply to the communal farmers,” said Mr Nyathi.
Matabeleland South is a dry area that depends on irrigation farming.
Online Reporter