Farmers get boost input facility as ZCFU unveils credit facility

Farmers get boost input facility as ZCFU unveils credit facility
Saturday, 23 July 2011 23:50 Agriculture
Agriculture Editor

THE Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union (ZCFU) has come up with an input credit facility for the 2011/12 summer cropping season. The credit scheme, which is open to all farmers who are formally employed elsewhere, will allow access to inputs covering five hectares to facilitate early planting.

In an interview last week, the union’s chief economist, Mr Peter Gambara, said they had come up with the scheme to enable farmers to access inputs early. He said payment for the inputs would be spread over a period of between three and five months depending on the total cost of inputs one would have accessed.

Mr Gambara said arrangements would be made with the companies where the farmers are employed for the payments to be made through a stop-order facility.

“We are calling on all farmers, regardless of which union one belongs to, to take advantage of this facility as we are trying to address the challenges of farmers accessing inputs late,’’ said Mr Gambara.

He said all salaried farmers were eligible adding that the union was looking at assisting the Government in its efforts to avail inputs to the farmers.

He said failure to access inputs on time had previously led to farmers failing to fully utilise land. In some cases farmers had completely failed to plant.
Farmers welcomed the idea as noble but bemoaned the fact that the scheme was only open to those in formal employment.

A farmer from Beatrice, Mr Silas Zinzende, said such schemes were important as it was difficult for farmers to finance operations on their own.

He said lack of such schemes had left vast tracts of land being underutilised because of challenges related to the timeous procurement of inputs.

“I am not sure how many farmers will access these inputs considering that not many of them are in formal employment. We would have appreciated a scheme where all farmers are eligible to benefit,” said Mr Zinzende.

A farmer from Arcturus, Mr Tendai Mberi, said the scheme was good but reiterated the need to spread it to non-salaried farmers as long as they had the capacity to pay for the inputs.