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Obert Chifamba Agri-Insight
Fresh produce farmers who come to sell the crop at Mbare Musika pay between 50c and 70c per box of tomatoes for transport depending on the transporter.If the transporter is travelling during the night, it is the farmers’ choice to either hitch a ride on top of their produce in the trailer or wait to catch a bus the following morning.

Should they opt for the latter option, it means they have to part with between $5 and $7 to travel to Harare’s Mbare Musika from different parts of Murewa while the first preference allows them a free ride but will need them to fork out more cash for accommodation or they either sleep in the trucks, shop verandas or anywhere in the open.

They will need a dollar to either use a toilet or take a quick bath the following morning, so this will also mean an extra cost.

So, either way, the farmer is confronted with a mounting list of costs that all threaten to chew up the expected revenue from the produce well before it is even marketed.

In the morning they have to check their produce into the market at six o’clock but that is not before they pay an amount of $6 to council employees manning the market.

And please note that $6 is for 50 boxes and below and anything above that number means paying another $6 regardless of the fact that it is still one farmer’s produce.

If the farmer has, for instance, 150 boxes, it means they need to engage two more people for the check-in and these two people will also need to pay $6 each for the selling period that starts at six o’clock and ends at 12 o’clock in the afternoon.

If the produce has not been entirely sold out, it means the farmer has to pay again for the next day and will have to spend another night in the city under appalling conditions.

Inside the market, unscrupulous middlemen are always on the prowl and wait for the slightest opportunity to rip off farmers that may be facing even the simplest of difficulties.

The farmers, under normal circumstances, sell a box of tomatoes for between $3 and $4 but there are days when prices will be on a free fall and they will be forced to give them away for as little as $1 for a box or $1 for two boxes.

Suspicion is also ubiquitous that people in the vegetable retail markets deliberately influence demand and pricing patterns for their own benefit and so they will get produce for a song from the farmers and later sell at better prices.

It is sadly ironic that the farmer who toils from the production process of the crops to the point of marketing ends up getting very little and that “very little” is earned under very difficult conditions too.

Some farmers I had a chance to talk to said they had been in the business for more than three decades and feel they had given council enough taxes to just build free ablution facilities for the farmers within the precincts of the market, while rooms for overnight lodging would also be an answer to their accommodation woes.

To me, their complaints made a lot of sense. They are currently trudging in pools of mud as they sell their produce on a surface that does not have even just plain bricks for a floor yet they pay daily in their numbers.

Security for the produce is an absolute joke as thieves are reportedly working in cahoots with council employees to fleece the farmers.

“Council employees can come for more than seven times just to check on tickets for the $6 that we pay yet when we have a complaint over lost merchandise they suddenly vanish into thin air or pretend to be very busy elsewhere.

“Sometimes our produce is even confiscated by municipal police and taken allegedly to their Remembrance office but if you make a follow-up you will not get anything. We have in many cases only managed to recover our boxes that are later dumped here at the market some days after the disappearance of the produce,” one irate farmer said to me.

Sometimes farmers even fail to raise a fraction of the miscellaneous costs incurred during the marketing process and end up selling livestock like goats to pay transporters while some end up watching their produce going bad in their custody after failing to take it to the market.

With most roads in a very deplorable state at the moment, some transporters are reportedly refusing to go to the farming areas to collect produce leaving farmers at the mercy of the infamous middlemen who purport to be playing the role of an institution between producers and consumers, but that role is highly exploitative and detrimental to the interests of the farmers who give away their produce at unviable prices because they do not have direct access to markets. The middlemen literally control market prices.

The farmers end up with meagre pickings, which cannot sustain their families and barely cover production costs.

Mbare Musika has a holding capacity of 200 marketing stalls and caters for over 2 000 traders from all over the country.

A lot of produce actually goes bad before it is sold due to lack of storage facilities and is thrown away.

This sad eventuality is always happening despite the fact that council collects more than $24 million in revenue from Mbare Musika annually but does not seem to care about sprucing up the place from where it is making such revenue figures.

Agricultural products coming from South Africa have also provided stiff competition, which has forced some of the farmers to sell their produce on street pavements in Harare where they are constantly harassed by municipal cops.

It’s time Government steps in and protect these perennial contributors to the multi-million dollar Mbare agro-economy.

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