dyton mupawaenda
Edgar Vhera-Agriculture Specialist Writer
WITH mounds of rotten horticultural products marking the order of the day in most urban agricultural markets, stakeholders have called on the Zimbabwe Mercantile Exchange (ZMX) to include their products on the platform to lessen food losses and improve farmers’ incomes.
Contributing at the Agri-Business Forum held in Harare recently, farmer and Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) chairperson Mr Ivan Craig said food losses were rampant at agricultural markets and called on the ZMX to introduce their trade on their platform.
“As much as we have food processors, go to Mbare market right now and see how much food they are losing. There are heaps of tomatoes, cabbages, lettuce, spinach, beetroot, turnip, radish and carrots, among others. These are all farmers’ losses. Does ZMX have a facility to track or receive fresh produce,” the ARDA chair asked.
He said ZMX must work on investing in refrigeration and take the example of Equatorial Guinea that has a massive investment in blast freezers and cold rooms just to ensure that whatever is produced by the farmer is locked in, sold locally or exported.
Mr Craig said if a farmer encountered a breakdown from Murehwa on her way to Harare markets that would be a loss of income as products like tomatoes or mangoes rot easily.
“Food processors need to ensure that there is a way to value add fresh produce to lock value of produce to farmers. Though at home farmers can value add their fresh produce by drying into products like mufushwa, dried tomato and onion, munyemba among others there is need for finance to start a project of value addition.
ZMX general manager Mr Garikayi Munema said their platform had not yet started trading in horticultural products, as they did not have the necessary infrastructure, unlike warehouses for grains.
“We have not yet started trading in horticulture on the platform but the warehouse receipt act, which forms the backbone of ZMX had approved a list of 49 products that can be traded. These include grains, oil seeds, horticulture and livestock. However, our operations as of now are currently restricted to grains and oil seeds. Our next step is to introduce horticulture and livestock,” Mr Munema said.
He said they had not yet started horticulture trading due to lack of cold chain infrastructure.
Until we have the infrastructure and the trading guide framework, we cannot start horticulture trade, he continued.
ZMX is an agricultural commodity exchange, which operates the warehouse receipt system (WRS), spot and futures market trading platform. It is a private sector led initiative facilitated by Government and development partners as a public private partnership (PPP).
It was born out of the realisation that local commodity markets face a number of challenges such as mispricing of commodities, inconsistent application of grading standards, information asymmetry and logistics nightmare.
Seasonality in supply, which tends to put high pressure on buyers to mop out all the supply during harvest seasons without balance sheet to support the procurement as well as inadequate private sector agricultural financing lays credence to the need to develop the ZMX.
Online Reporter