(HERALD) Start planning for agric season

Start planning for agric season

WE are just coming out of the winter season. It will only be a few months before the rains start falling and preparations for the next agricultural season intensify. We have said it before and we will repeat it once again that we do not want to be caught napping when the rains start falling. We need to build our stocks now through imports and supporting the local manufacturers to acquire the much-needed raw materials to produce fertilizer. Noble efforts by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to ensure that the country has adequate stocks of fertilizer are most welcome.

The bank has indicated that it is aiming to provide the fertilizer manufacturing industry with US$10 million every month which would enable it to operate at full capacity and meet the country’s demand. Zimbabwe’s requirements for fertilizer stand at 560 000 tonnes per year and with an allocation of US$10 million a month, the industry can produce about 25 000 tonnes of fertilizer a month.

Under normal circumstances, between 50 and 75 percent of fertilizer required for summer cropping would be in place by now.

Last year was a good season had it not been for the heavy rains and floods that washed away most of the crops.

In areas which were not flooded and had good rains, farmers’ efforts to put more land under the staple maize crop went to waste because fertilizer was inadequate.

Planning is of utmost importance in agriculture and under normal circumstances, farmers start stocking up for the next season as soon as they receive money from selling produce such as maize, tobacco, cotton or soya beans.

We, therefore, commend fertilizer companies who have already rolled out about 700 tonnes of fertilizer during the past week.

Zimbabwe has sizeable phosphate deposits and a fairly sophisticated chemical industry that should be able to produce more of the other compounds required to manufacture fertilizer locally.

Zimbabwean industrialists should do away with the tendency to import finished products in bulk which they simply package.

It is time, as we have said before, to get their hands dirty by engaging in the actual manufacture.

For fertilizer, a change of attitude to maximise local content might well require companies in the mining, chemical and fertilizer industries to co-operate, set up new ventures and build entirely new industries.

But we would also like to see the long-term plans of Zimbabwean industry geared to being more self-sufficient, to the extent that it can export supplies.

The Government has time and again encouraged fertilizer companies to look at alternative fertilizers, and hopefully this includes organic fertilizers. We just wonder what happens to much of the organic waste from Zimbabwe’s industries, present and planned.

The jatropha biodiesel plant along Old Mazowe Road in Harare should be producing tonnes of waste that cannot be fed to livestock.

Has anyone in the fertilizer industry ever thought of processing it into fertilizer?

With the support the fertilizer industry is getting from the Government, it must now deliver and start imaginatively planning to boost production, in ways that make the country more self-sufficient.