Ellita Chikwati Agriculture Reporter
Government and stakeholders should strengthen agro-dealers and retailers in farming areas for farmers to access inputs closer to their farms.
Farmer organisations believe the initiative would reduce costs and time spent by farmers travelling to and from cities to purchase inputs. Agricultural

Agriculture Reporter
Communal farmers are topping the list of registered tobacco growers for the 2012/13 cropping season. Of the 54 482 registered tobacco growers, 21 400 are from the communal sector while 9 837 are new growers. Latest statistics from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board show that communal

Agriculture Reporter
Zimpapers chief executive Mr Justin Mutasa, who on Thursday scooped the Tobacco Sales Floor 2012 Tobacco Grower of the Year Award coming third in the commercial farming competition, has attributed his success to proper planning. Such success, he said, testified to the nobleness of black

Senior Agriculture Reporter
MOST farmers have not yet received the interpreted versions of the 2012/13 weather forecast amid reports that Agritex officers are inca­pacitated to reach out to them. The Meteorological Department recently forecast that Zimbabwe would have a normal to below normal rainy season. The forecast has a lot of technical terms

Agriculture Reporter
THE Agricultural Marketing Authority has warned farmers against venturing into farming enterprises without sufficient information on available markets and prices being offered. Presenting a paper at a farmers’ meeting organised by Action Aid in Harare on Monday, AMA director production and

Herald reporter
THE Government has urged smallholder farmers to join savings and credit co-operatives and village banks to assist themselves in raising working capital. Speaking at the World Food Day commemorations in Chivhu on Wednesday, Small and Medium Enterprises and Co-operative Development

Senior Agriculture Reporter
GOVERNMENT has been challenged to intensify Agritex officials’ training in interpreting and conversion of weather data. Addressing delegates attending a stakeholders’ meeting yesterday, a senior Agritex official Ms Morleen Mupandawana said new staff members in her department were

Agriculture Reporter
PREPARATIONS for the 2012/13 summer cropping season have started, but stakeholders say more needs to be done to ensure farmers are ready.
Most of the farmers are concentrating on land preparations, while others are procuring inputs as they wait for the onset of the rainfall season which

Elita Chikwati Agriculture Reporter
The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board has registered 49 000 growers to produce the crop in the 2012/13 summer season. The figure is seven times more than the total number of farmers who had registered to grow the golden leaf during the same period last year.  Seven thousand growers

Agriculture Reporter
Rains for the 2012/13 summer cropping season are expected to begin mid-November, while farmers in most parts of the country have already started land preparations. Meteorological Services Department senior officer Mr Jonathan Chifuna said it was difficult to forecast the exact dates of the onset

Ellita Chikwati Agriculture Reporter
Most cotton growers in Mashonaland Central province have switched to tobacco production because of the low prices offered for the crop on the market this season. The farmers have started constructing curing barns and others have already established seedbeds. At the same time the farmers are