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The falling global prices of raw edible oils is, as Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya noted last week, good news for Zimbabwe and should reduce both the cost of cooking oil for consumers and the national import bill, since we are an importer rather than an exporter.

But the yo-yoing international price are another good reason why our own farmers should be encouraged and empowered to grow enough soya beans and other feedstocks for edible oils so that we are least self-sufficient and can not only fix our prices for a year a time, the 12 months between harvests, but also by saving the transport costs both pay our farmers decent prices to grow the products and trim retail prices for consumers.

Since the stabilisation of exchange rates through the Reserve Bank auction cooking oil, margarine and other products based on vegetable oils have bucked the general trend of stable shelf prices and have risen around 45 percent, the price rise driven by a rough doubling in the costs of the raw oils that have to be imported.

The intense competition in the manufacturing sector, and since the producers are not close friends and golfing partners cartels were nearly impossible, has shielded the consumers from the whole rise in the major imported raw material. So there has been a high degree of responsibility in the oil expresser sector and the market economy in this area has worked properly.

But Dr Mangudya did talk about the strain imposed on his foreign currency sales through the auctions and his need to ensure the auctions had adequate currency to sell.

The cooking oil companies do dominate the top 10 slots at the weekly auctions, so even a modest cut in the currency they need to supply the local market will have a significant effect on Zimbabwe’s balance of payments.

It is obvious from the Governor’s remarks that he did query the rising bids from a group of his biggest currency buyers, did investigate, and was satisfied that he was not facing a ring of abusers operating a cartel. As a general rule central bank governors are not that fascinated by global vegetable oil prices and Dr Mangudya’s sudden strong interest in these markets must have been triggered by the significant percentage of total auction bids he receives from those who do have to buy in them.

But the other factor that must be taken into account is that those tens of millions of US dollars paid to foreign farmers, foreign seed buyers, foreign raw oil expressers, foreign shipping companies, foreign port authorities and foreign trucking companies is money that could have been pumped into the local economy if we grew more oil seeds.

Estimates have been made that with the growth in tobacco production and the dramatic rise in grain harvests, along with jumps in things like cotton and even soya beans, incomes of small-scale farmers have doubled this year. But the dramatic gap in oil seeds between what our farmers grow and what we consume shows that there is another large area where another large income jump is possible.

As we have stressed so often, converting subsistence farmers into business people and pushing up their standards of living benefits us all. We do not just get a growing economy, and regardless of whether you accept the Government estimate of 7,5 percent growth this year, the IMF estimate of 6 percent, or the pessimists’ estimate of 3,5 percent, our economy is growing.

The bulk of that growth is driven by the growth in what farmers grow. And because more than 1 million families have shared in that farm growth, the extra wealth is not being held in the hands of a few rich people, a wealthy elite, but is being widely distributed and shared.

That in turn means that a lot of other people win since those farming families, even if they are ultra-prudent, are still going to be spending a lot more money on things other Zimbabweans make and other Zimbabweans provide. If you want a single simple and crude example, when 1 million families each buy a couple of pairs of hard-wearing work trousers, a lot of factories are going to have a good year as well.

During the past season the inputs schemes did have a soya bean component, introducing a lot of farmers to a new crop that some may have been wary of. This has been reflected in the jump in deliveries to contractors, the largest of which is the Grain Marketing Board although some cooking oil companies have been dipping their toes into contract farming.

The larger cotton crop also means more cotton seed for processing and sunflower has always been a cash crop for some small-scale farmers and should not be ignored since skills are already in place.

The experience gained in oil seed during a good rainfall season must now be built on for the next season, which may not be so good and so requires better farming. Soya beans can also be included in crop rotation strategies since it is a legume, so does not chew nitrogenous fertiliser, and provides a lot of fairly reasonable mulch and organic content for soil.

The more perceptive of the old tobacco estate owners in fact used it extensively as a follow on crop to use up residual fertilisers from their tobacco farming and to help restore organic content and nitrogen levels in tobacco fields before moving into the maize and fallow periods of their rotations.

It was that which made Zimbabwe largely self-sufficient in soya beans, admittedly at a time when the population was lower and a larger segment of the population could not afford what has now become a high consumption necessity in even the poorest households.

And the growth of a fast food industry based on the fryer rather than the boiler has also boosted demand.

For all sorts of reasons, monetary, fiscal and social, it makes good sense to expand the inputs schemes and farm training to put in a larger component for oil seed. We all win as farmer, consumer, industrialist or shopkeeper.

And the fall in cooking oil prices, not that dramatic, should not worry farmers since the transport savings mean they can still be properly paid.