Farmers hold on to grain
LIVINGSTONE MARUFU
Maize farmers are holding on to their grain demanding to be paid in United States dollars despite the government ordering the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) to invoke the legislation to increase deliveries.
Government gazetted Statutory Instrument (SI) 145 of 2018, which compels farmers to sell their grain to the GMB which has the sole rights to buy all the grain at a fixed price.
Recently, the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement told GMB to rope in law enforcement agencies as deliveries to date were 5,000 metric tonnes from about 30,000 metric tonnes harvested.
Zimbabwe National Farmers Union chairman Stewart Mubonderi told Business Times that farmers should not be hurried to deliver maize as they also watch the developments in the market so they are pushing for negotiations for the US$ price.
“There is a fear of side-marketing. It may happen as the ZWL$75000 per tonne is way below the US$300 per tonne expected by the farmers hence the reason for holding on to their crop.
“The SI does not help the situation but the authorities should address the issues that farmers are raising rather than imposing threats to them,” Mubonderi said, adding that authorities “should put in place a US$ price as farmers procure everything in hard currency hence threats don’t work there”.
“They should not put a blanket SI on all farmers but to contract farmers only as they should repay loans they took at the beginning of the season.
“For those who funded themselves they should ensure that they exercise their freedom,” he said.
This year a total area of 1 900 754 hectares were put under maize with a projected yield of 1 557 914 tonnes of maize thereby giving us an average of 0.82 tonnes per hectare.
This is a huge drop from 1.39 tonnes per hectare recorded during the 2020/20221 summer cropping season.
This is attributed to late onset of the season, intermittent and prolonged dry spells experienced in most parts of the country as well as poor rainfall distribution across most parts of the country during the peak production period of the season.
This means the grain is short supply given the dry spells.
The ZWL$75, 000/MT is equivalent to US$166 using a parallel market rate.
A Goromonzi-based farmer Joshua Nyamukacha told Business Times that all inputs are indexed in US$ hence the ZWL$ would not be useful to farmers.
“US$166/ tonne is not a good price if they want deliveries at GMB. Farming maize was particularly difficult this season and those who were able to produce high yields were very fortunate,” he said.
“For this year I do not think that I will be able to take my crop to the GMB. A lot of farmers will be holding their crop especially at that price. Those who are likely to forfeit their maize are probably A2 farmers who were able to produce larger yields or those who had access to irrigation. Farmers that relied on rainfall for the season were not able to produce as much this year.”
He said the GMB should consider pricing in US dollar at a price of either US$300 or US$350 as the price of maize on the black market will be much higher than what they are offering and farmers will be more inclined to go there, and to markets were there are maize shortages in order to make a larger profit.
“And with the way the [exchange] rate is going the amount being offered could become valueless in a short period of time. They announced it yesterday and by the time we take it to the floor it won’t be able to buy a bag of fertiliser.” Nyamakacha said.
Another farmer Edith Mururami said fertiliser and labour costs are all in US$ and an average farm hand demands about US$4 per day for labour and with school fees to pay and other commodities.
“So, to pay us ZWL$75 000 per tonne is just not enough. We need to be paid US$ 300 or US$350 in order to meet our needs and cover the costs of farming. There is no way we can go back and farm after receiving US$200 assuming that the money will be equivalent to that by the time we exchange it,” Mururami said.
