The Sunday Mail
Business Reporter
When Valerie Madziva decided to venture into farming in 2016, she could have easily settled for any of the traditional crops, maize, soya bean, or wheat.
After all, Zimbabwe has had a huge deficit of these crops for years.
The country is spending millions of foreign currency to import these agricultural produces.
Last year combined imports of maize, wheat, and soya bean crops alone were worth approximately US$500 million.
If one is to grow these crops, there is always a ready market. The three crop’s produce are part of our everyday meals.
Soya bean for cooking oil, maize meal for sadza, and wheat flour for our daily bread.
But just as in everything else we do what is best for us as individuals or institutions.
We do what is lucrative for us and what we think gives us the reward that we deserve.
For Valerie Madziva, her toil in the soil, at their farm, is to produce fruit and vegetables with a particular focus on the export market.
While their farm does produce crops like maize, the commercial aspect is focused on growing fruit and vegetables.
An ordinary woman would have just settled to grow vegetables and feed her family.
But Valerie is not your ordinary woman.
For her even feeding a family as big as Zimbabwe is not the limit. Her target is beyond feeding Zimbabwe.
With increased health awareness in the general public and changing dietary patterns, vegetables are now becoming an integral part of average household’s daily meals.
There is a huge demand for fresh fruits and vegetables in the local as well as international markets, which includes Europe, Middle East, and Far Eastern markets. There is thus a huge market to be conquered.
Last month Valerie was in Dubai as part of the outward seller mission organised by Zimtrade as part of its trade development and promotion mandate.
The mission placed Valerie and a few other local farmers in front of the Arab region’s senior decision makers when it comes to fruit and vegetables that is consumed in homes and in hotels.
It’s not every day that one gets to sit in front of a person in charge of procuring millions if not billions of dollars’ worth of fruits and vegetables per year.
But this is what the seller mission did for Valerie.
She got to pitch to Ali Gholami’s (Dubai) Import Manager Shihad Aboobacker. Ali Gholami counts itself as a leading supplier to top-tier hotels.
Dubai also offered an opportunity to meet up with the procurement team at Barakat Vegetables & Fruits Co, which counts itself as leading suppliers of a diverse spectrum of fresh produce to five-star establishments, Class A retailers and major airline catering companies in the UAE.
But Valerie was unfazed by the stature of the executives in front of her. She carried herself like an equal. A determined supplier.
With her samples on the table, like a pro, Valerie showcased what her farm can bring to the dining table in Dubai and to the other countries that it re-exports to.
In a pitch to Ali Gholami’s Shihad Aboobacker Valeri highlighted the capacity of Eden Chase to meet agreed supplies.
Eden Chase is a group of 15 farmers in Mutorashanga with a total farm area of 800 hectares producing various export oriented products such as peas, blue and black berries, baby marrow, among others.
“Our strength is in group work, because we grow everything continuously so we tend to do crop rotation to manage our pests and improve our soil structures so we give each other a plant programme so that we continuously supply you with product,” Valerie told Shihad Aboobacker.
But how did it all start for her.
While the farm was ceded to Valerie by her father, going into farming was mostly about following her passion.
“Also when you are in farming you are your own boss and you have time to spend with your family,” she said.
Despite the flexibility that she gets from farming, Valerie treats it like a business.
We have heard that the sky is the limit, but for Valerie the world is the limit.
At Eden Chase they are not confining themselves to the local market.
Three years after embarking on her farming journey, she started looking outside Zimbabwe’s borders for bigger and more lucrative export markets.
“We started researching on the export market in 2018, then in 2019 when we had sold our tobacco we managed to get the funds to start our export company which is called Eden Chase Pvt Limited.”
However, getting to export was not bed of roses as Valerie soon found out. In the early days the export market was “kind of monopoly” as one needed to be “under someone” to get started.
But things got better when Eden Chase got a Global Gap Certification.
The Global Gap Certification opened a window for Eden Chase to export under export agencies but this had its limitations.
At some point they were asked to plant on a bigger hectarage and yet the agent did not have a ready market for the harvest.
Valerie and her team ended up selling some of the produce locally resulting in considerable losses.
“It was kind of a loss for us because these export crops are of high value, the seed is quite expensive and even the maintenance of the crop is quite expensive. So you would want to just deal with the export market for better returns,” Valerie pointed out.
But this did not deter her.
With a Global Gap Certification more opportunities opened up including the Dubai outward seller mission organised by Zimtrade.
Commenting on the mission, Varie said engagements with Dubai based companies had showed much potential to do business.
“Honestly speaking the mission has been fruitful to me, we are spoilt for choice now after meeting about five buyers,” Madziva said.
“So far we have secured orders for berries and baby marrows so we already have work to do, before we even get back.”
She however, said to make an impact, Zimbabwe farmer exporters will have to work together as they do at Eden Chase. Valerie also called on Government and the financial services sector to provide funding for young farmers. She highlighted that as young farmers they lack assets such as title deeds to get loans from the banks.
“With such big orders that we got, we certainly need funding and hopefully banks such as the refocused Agricultural Finance Company (formerly Agribank) will come to the party,” said Valerie.
