TENDAIISHE NYAMUKUNDA
Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector has been negatively impacted by climate change and other issues, according to farmers, making 2023 another turbulent year.
According to them, the numerous difficulties farmers faced this year may have made it one of the worst for them.
Vice president of the Tobacco Farmers Union Trust Edward Dune said this year was a difficult year for farmers nationwide in all agricultural sectors.
He said: “The agricultural sector has had a big share of challenges ever, but 2023 will go down in the memory lane for its harsher macro economic environment” .
The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union president, Dr Shadreck Makombe weighed in saying: “2023 was quite a challenging year as can be seen or vindication by the Government allowing people to import maize meal, maize, wheat flour and so forth, it shows that there is a gap to be filled as well.
According to Makombe, people began importing wheat flour before all wheat farmers had finished harvesting their crops. This made matters worse for the farmers because the imported wheat was less expensive than the wheat that was produced locally, costing them market share.
“People started importing wheat flour before all farmers had harvested. Now that we have harvested our wheat, it means there is now a challenge on farmers to sell their wheat because the wheat which is coming to Zimbabwe is landing at a lower cost than the locally manufactured wheat, so it becomes a challenge, “Makombe said.
He added: “Moreso in terms of payment for produces which were sold to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) there was a delay though the situation of late has improved , but you would find most of the cereals which were delivered to GMB and all other crops we’re not paid for making it difficult for farmers to go back to the field to retool and plant because they did not have money to buy inputs or for them to buy diesel and to hire tractors for them to plant and grow crops “Makombe added that because most farmers did not have enough money they were unable to purchase some of the extremely expensive agricultural inputs.
“Some of the inputs were quite expensive though we saw prices of fertilizers going down but there was no money to purchase even the inputs which had gone down because the produce had not been bought,” said Makombe.
“For starters the prices of basic farming inputs skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. For example a bag of Compound C would cost up to US$100 and AN up to US$ 75.
“All farming operations were charged in United States dollars but farmer commodities were paid partly in local currency and partly in United States dollars,” Dune said.
El Nino reportedly caused delays in the country’s summer cropping season preparations because the country did not receive the typical amount of rain that would have allowed farmers to begin planting their crops in October.
“Preparing for this season El-Nino also became a challenge because you would find that rains are just starting to fall as late as December whereas ordinarily everything being equal rains would have started falling in October.
“Those are the rains which could have been conducive for long season varieties, it is a challenge now because you cannot plant medium and long varieties, you ought to do it with short season and it depends also with how short the seeds are because we are told that the seasoning going forward we are also going to have some challenges,” Makombe said.
Dune weighed in: “The El-Nino phenomenon has also had a huge dent in terms of weather vagaries and this compounds the ongoing suffering of our hard working farmers as we fast approach the end of the unforgettable 2023.”
