dyton mupawaenda
Michael Tome-Business Reporter
ZIMTRADE in partnership with PUM, CBZ and Chainn yesterday launched the Horticulture Export Masterclass (HEM2023) as the national trade development and promotion body aims to enlist smallholder farmers, bringing them to mainstream export business.
The HEM2023 is an upgrade from “The Best Model Farm Project” which ran between 2019 – 2022, with ZimTrade and PUM collaborating with three medium-sized farms from Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, and Midlands Provinces.
Best Model Farm Project was a success as PUM facilitated knowledge transfer while ZimTrade and the Dutch Embassy provided market intelligence.
During this phase, knowledge was inculcated into farmers to grow peas, particularly for exports.
To date, operations from the three farms have diversified into blueberries, avocadoes, sweet potatoes, and citrus production.
However, the HEM2023 seeks to improve mid-sized farmers’ export skills especially those with intentions to later export into the European Union (EU) market.
The project aims to assist those who have never exported or those who have exported through agents.
According to ZimTrade, the EU is one of the biggest markets in terms of horticulture produce as well as Zimbabwe’s priority markets in the period from 2022-2025 when it comes to export business.
The EU imports US$118,7 billion worth of horticulture produce accounting for over 45 percent of global trade (horticultural). The Netherlands on its own is a significant importer of horticultural produce per year.
The masterclass also avails key markets such as the Middle East, South East Asia, and some regional to exporters who will enlist through the program.
“You find that, as a country we have a horticulture recovery and growth plan whose main target is to increase our horticulture exports to US$300 million by 2030. So today (yesterday) we launched the horticulture export Masterclass, whose major aim is to bring the smallholder farmer to mainstream export business.
“As ZimTrade we are here to express our commitment to the development of exports in the horticulture sector. We are quite aware that some farmers are not exporting or are exporting through agents while some are not exporting at all.
“ZimTrade together with our partners’ Dutch Embassy, PUM, Chainn, and CBZ are prepared to handhold and walk with you on this export journey,” said Mr Similo Nkala ZimTrade Director of operations.
Increasing horticultural production is in line with the National Development Strategy 1 (2021-2025), whose main objective is to structurally transform Zimbabwe’s economy from one highly dependent on a set of exports.
In that regard, the Treasury last year allocated US$30 million horticulture export revolving fund from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights.
“We have to capacitate smallholder farmers so that they can also be able to export their products. Its issues of quality and quantity, so during this Masterclass program we are going to assist the smallholder farmers on the production side so that they can improve on the quality and also to improve on the yield per hectare to become competitive.
“We also would want them to consolidate their consignments, since exports are a game of numbers. For you to export you should be able to have the required numbers.”
The US$30 million horticulture revolving fund was launched last September to capacitate local farmers in boosting production and tackling challenges related to the unavailability of appropriately structured financing for short to long-term expenditures.
This comes at a time when the Horticultural Development Council (HDC) is advancing the production of blueberries, citrus, coffee, and flowers.
According to Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency’s (ZIDA) first-quarter report HDC submitted its plans to secure an additional 4 000 hectares for blueberry production estimated to cost US$140 million to develop.
For coffee production, the HDC plans to establish and manage 1,000 hectares of coffee in the eastern Highlands (Manicaland) and support 1 300 small and medium-scale coffee producers to produce circa 2 220 tonnes per year with a gross value of over US$11 million annually.
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