The government of Zimbabwe has announced that the contract farming concept will be maintained. Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement deputy minister Vangelis Haritatos noted that the system of farming has a number of benefits more so to small scale farmers.
The system according to the deputy minister is a viable funding and marketing solution for farmers who are unable to secure bank financing and enter the marketplace on their own. The farmers get access to credit to pay for production inputs. Contract farming also enables contractors to influence the production process by, for instance, providing yield-boosting inputs. Haritatos pointed out that the country’s agricultural sector is battling for financial injection and the contract system is part of the problem solving.
“We as the government have to provide an enabling environment for the private sector to come in and take over the financing of the agricultural economy. If we say we are moving away from contracting, now we are actually going backwards. We need to promote more contracting. The yields that must come are to do with productivity and production so what we are saying is that the cost of producing crop is not relative to the inputs that person has been given,” Haritatos said.
He continued: “On a normal package, whether it’s coming from a contractor or it’s the farmer buying himself, or it’s a presidential input programme, what we expect from the Agriculture ministry regardless of whether it’s PIP or self-finance, is a certain tonnage. With contract farming, the buyer is almost always required to provide some level of production support, such as the provision of technical guidance and the delivery of materials.”
Such agreements are based on the farmer’s commitment to providing a certain commodity in the quantities and to the quality standards specified by the purchaser, and the company’s commitment to support the farmer’s production and to buy the commodity. In Zimbabwe, this has usually taken the form of agricultural input support from private lenders approved through ongoing government farming schemes.
“The rains are not a threat yet; these are the rains that warn of bigger rains. What we are saying to all our farmers is that let us get harvesting that wheat off. What we have seen around the country is that most wheat, a high percentage of our wheat, is ready to be harvested. Let’s get our combine harvesters out there,” Haritatos said.
