The Sunday Mail
Lincoln Towindo
At least 270 000 households have received farming inputs under the 2015-2016 Presidential Inputs Well-Wishers Scheme.
Despite projections of poor rains, President Mugabe’s Government has not lost hope and is targeting to assist no less than 350 000 households this summer season with the US$28 million scheme.
Each household gets 10kg of maize or small grain seed, and 50kg each of compound D and ammonium nitrate fertilisers.
At least 12 tonnes of maize seed, 26 000 tonnes and 10 000 tonnes of compound D and AN fertilisers respectively from the previous season have been added to the facility.
At least one million cotton farmers will get cotton seed as part of efforts to resuscitate that sub-sector.
Households receive 25kg of cotton seed, enough to cover a quarter of a hectare, and 50kg of fertiliser.
Notwithstanding the delayed onset of rains, farmer unions say planting has started.
Forecasts by the Meteorological Services Department indicate that the season will run from December to February/March. Historically, significant rains have come between October and March.
While Government is stepping up efforts to help farmers, it has emerged that there is slow uptake of a US$1 billion bank facility to fund agriculture because the funds come with stringent conditions.
Farmers say they do not meet requirements such as provision of immovable assets as collateral.
The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union estimates that only five percent of farmers have received support through the fund.
Agriculture Deputy Minister Davis Marapira said Government wanted all farmers to access inputs.
“By the end of the (Presidential Inputs Well-Wishers) programme, between 600 000 and one million households would have benefited,” said Deputy Minister Marapira. “Already 75 percent of the programme has been completed.”
He noted with concern the low uptake of funds set aside for farming by banks.
“We expect to have this rectified in future through the introduction of facilities such as warehouse receipting system which we expect to kick in by next season. This will enable our farmers to make use of such facilities and financiers to recover their outlay without much hustle.”
Bankers Association of Zimbabwe President Mr Sam Malaba said only individual banks could comment.
ZCFU president Mr Wonder Chabikwa said lack of financing weighed down agriculture production.
“Preparations are not as good as we had anticipated. We have been drawn back largely by the lack of finance options; finance for repairs and maintenance of our machinery and for inputs. This has slowed down the rate of operations,” said Mr Chabikwa.
“However, there are some areas that have been lucky enough to receive the first meaningful rains.
“We have areas like Bindura where some crops are already at good developmental stage while in some areas crops are already germinating. But . . . most of or farmers are still at the planting stage.”
Zimbabwe requires at least US$1,7 billion to fund crop and livestock production for 2015-6, up from the US$1,2 billion in 2014-15.
Supporting agriculture is in line with Zim-Asset’s Food Security and Nutrition Cluster.
