The Sunday Mail
Tendai Chara
A senior agricultural extension officer has urged smallholder farmers to commercialise their operations as Government’s efforts to ensure food security and employment creation are now bearing fruit.Speaking during a media tour of the Chibuwe/Musikavanhu irrigation schemes in Chipinge, Mr Tapiwa Chagwesha, the Chipinge district agricultural extension officer, said smallholder farmers are capable of equalling or even surpassing the average crop yields that are realised by large-scale commercial farmers.
The Chibuwe/Musikavanhu irrigation scheme is a shining example of how the commercialisation of smallholder farming operations can help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development and social equity as defined by the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation.
“These farmers have demonstrated that communal and smallholder farmers can produce commercially. Unlike in the past when locals produced maize for family consumption, Chibuwe farmers are now taking maize as a commercial crop and contributing immensely to national food security,” Mr Chagwesha said.
The Chibuwe/Musikavanhu irrigation scheme is the largest communal irrigation scheme in the country with 1 008 hectares under irrigation and about 800 hectares of these under sugar beans.
A total of 935 farmers are commercially producing high-value crops such as bananas, stockfeed and peas, among other crops. An irrigated 40-hectare banana plantation is also thriving while 100 hectares are earmarked for tomato production.
The farmers are expecting a yield of at least 1,5 tonnes of tomatoes per hectare.
Officially, the Chibuwe/Musikavanhu farmers have sold 1,1 million tonnes of beans so far with middlemen and private buyers purchasing the biggest chunk of the farmers’ harvested beans.
Mr Philip Chamwaita is one of the local farmers who have demonstrated that smallholder rural farmers can commercially produce both beans and maize.
The farmer’s average yield is three tonnes of beans per hectare when the national average yield of beans is 0,8 tonnes per hectare.
“I owe my success to the agricultural extension officers who taught me good farming practices. I was taught how to take farming as a business and how to budget and estimate crop yields,” Mr Chamwaita said.
So far, he has realised more than $7 000 from maize and beans sales and his total estimate sales for this season amounts to $12 000.
Despite the fact that Chibuwe is situated in the drought-prone ecological region 5, local farmers have sold 540 tonnes of maize so far.
Smallholder communal farmers in Nyanga and Honde Valley are also registering significant increases in their crop yields.
After commercialising their operations, the banana farmers are doing exceptionally well with some of them surpassing the average yield of 14 tonnes of bananas per hectare.
Before the intervention of Government through the deployment of agricultural extension workers, smallholder banana farmers in Honde Valley used to produce an average yield of only four tonnes per hectare.
Some of the farmers were previously selling about two tonnes of bananas per year worth only $200 but are now selling in excess of five tonnes per month worth over $1 500.
Mr Kennedy Zimunya, a field manager with the USAID-sponsored Zimbabwe Agricultural Income and Employment Development Programme, said the commercialisation of the smallholder farmer is the next step in these areas and many others.
“By investing in the development of agri-businesses, families will have a more consistent source of food and income throughout any given year.
In the long term, these farming activities help communities withstand future food crises and increase income-earning opportunities,” Mr Zimunya said.
The programme facilitated access to credit for smallholder farmers by linking them to banks, micro-finance institutions and markets.
