Maravi

(HERALD) Chegutu farmer builds silos

Chegutu farmer builds silos
Friday, 09 September 2011 02:00
Obert Chifamba

A Chegutu farmer Mr Tobias Musariri is building two silos at his farm to store grain after incurring heavy seed maize losses caused by poor handling facilities last farming season. The two silos will cost US$150 000 and have a holding capacity of 1 000 tonnes of grain.

"I secured a loan from a bank to see the project through. "I am also going to install dryers in the silos to make it possible for the harvesting of maize even when it is not fully dry for safe storage against weather elements, pests and even fires.

"This will also allow me to seek markets without pressure as all my grain will be safely stashed away in the silos where it will be fumigated against boring insects to prolong the shelf life," said Mr Musariri in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr Musariri has hired two South Africans and 12 locals for the construction of the silos that he says will be completed by the end of the month.

He said he had to hire contractors from South Africa, as there were few locals who had the skills to construct silos, something he said should be addressed by extensive training of local human resources.

"We need to train the human resource component, which happens to be one of the vital cogs in agricultural production.

"I have five students on attachment from various tertiary institutions at the moment and that should also help broaden our base of trained personnel," said Mr Musariri.

He lamented the absence of farming magazines on the local markets saying he ended up subscribing to South Africa's Farmers Weekly to bridge the information gap.

But Mr Musariri will take long to forget the loss that inspired him to start the silo project.

"I have lost between 45 and 50 tonnes of seed maize to weevils.

"The grain was ruined while it was still on the field as we could not harvest it all at once because of storage and mechanisation challenges.

"Harvesting manually cost us.

"Seed maize was on 100ha while commercial maize was also on a similar hectarage.

"We have already delivered 300t to Seed Co while another 223t are also ready for delivery.

"We are going to sell the ruined seed as commercial maize but for a lesser value," he said.

Mr Musariri said farmers needed to be capacitated to harvest and deliver at the right time, at their own pace and at the right prices so that they remained in business.
He also lamented the high costs of sustaining hired labour that he said was charging between US$2,50 and US$5 per day depending on the nature of the job.

Mr Musariri has 45 permanent employees at his Pool Farm while he hires around 100 extra hands whenever there is pressure.

Mr Musariri owns 1 100 hectares of land after merging the two farms he bought in 1980 and 1990 respectively.

Labels: AGRICULTURE, MAIZE, SEEDCO, SILOS

posted by MrK @ 2:33 PM