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With the coming rainy season likely to see normal to above-normal rainfall, at least after the expected hesitant start, it is essential that all inputs for all farmers are ready on time and delivered to the farms before the rains start falling so planting can start as soon as the experts give the green light.

Seed stocks for the major crops of maize, sorghum, sunflower and cotton are all greater than the ambitious targets for areas to be planted. And these are the four main summer crops so the seed stocks are a good start.

But there are shortages for other crops. While sorghum seed is readily available, stocks of seed for the other two major traditional grains of finger millet and pearl millet need to be built up.

And there are several other traditional grains, not yet grown in huge quantities, which could be added to the mix.

Here the lack of commercial cross breeding and other modern research is a benefit, since the open pollinated seed delivered by farmers or retained by farmers can be used.

There is nothing wrong in doing this, but if this is to be the main source of seed in future it would be sensible to breed up these open pollinated varieties by selecting the best quality seed.

The range of traditional grains can be expanded, since they are the indigenous African grains, domesticated within Africa, and in Zimbabwe, until the first varieties of maize, a Central American crop, drifted up from the coastal trading ports these grains were the sole source of carbohydrates, and even in later times were the main source right up to around a century ago, when maize started to overtake.

But as work continues in increasing the cooking and eating of these indigenous grains, and building up markets which in the modern world can easily be export markets for exotic products, it seems sensible to encourage more variety and experimentation and research.

The other seed shortages seem to be among the oil seeds, groundnuts and soya. Here steps are in place to have the required quantities.

This has been done over the last couple of seasons when we talk about sunflower, which has shot up from being a very minor crop to sharing with cotton of being the principle source of cooking oil.

When we were almost totally reliant on imported oil seed and raw vegetable oils, soya became dominant because the temperate latitudes where it grows best have the commercial surpluses.

Sunflower had been a modest cash crop at one stage in communal lands, but appeared to have died down before, with the enthusiastic backing of a major cooking oil and margarine producer, it was relaunched as a major crop.

It has now become a major cash crop in the Pfumvudza/Intwasa system, being ideally suited for smallholder farming, and being reasonably drought-resistant can grow in most areas. We are now seeing a lot more sunflower oil sold on supermarket shelves, with producers prepared to market it as a pure oil at a small premium of the blends, which is fine.

We have been seeing more cotton seed oil appearing on the shelves, sometimes in blends, but more coyly labelled as longer lasting; cotton is almost unique among vegetable oils as being non-oxidising and so does last longer in deep frying applications, and is in fact the oil of choice among many fast food operations in developed countries.

But soya is still an important and useful crop and is ideal as part of the complex crop rotation cycles that tobacco and maize farmers in natural region two need to practice.

Zimbabwe needs cooking oils from all three main crops to return to full self-sufficiency, and to be self-sufficient as household incomes rise.

Ground nuts are an important crop, again largely for smallholder farmers, and the severe deficiency in seed must be addressed.

It is a high-value crop and in Zimbabwe is sold largely as the seed and as peanut butter, a value addition that can be made by small producers and which shows the way forward for such industry.  But there is a market in some countries for the vegetable oils from groundnuts and we need to look at this. So far we have been looking at growing enough oil seed for local demand.

Once we start exporting, we are going to need to export products, not seed or grain, and that means we need to build up specialist agro-industries to manufacture the highest value products. The producer prices in Zimbabwe for most crops are above world prices, which makes perfect sense when we were substituting for imports.

Importing grain or oil seed means paying the world price and then an extra slice for transport to a landlocked country near the bottom of a continent, so we could add some of those transport and shipping costs we were no longer paying to what we paid our farmers. But once we are in surplus and have set aside reserves for a bad season, we need to have products we can ship, and raw grain and oil seed do not look like the best bet, which manufactured products seem ideal.

The other input farmers need is fertiliser. Here Zimbabwe does need to import most of the nitrogen and some of the potassium fertiliser raw materials. The local manufacture of ammonia uses a method that only works viably with cheap surplus electricity, no longer on tap. Phosphates we mine and lime we now produce once again, and this is why we are now around 50 percent self-sufficient in basal fertilisers.

Some of the fertiliser requirements can be produced on farm, with manure, compost and mulches, and we need to encourage farmers to build up their soils this way as well as increase fertility with artificial fertilisers. The highest yields go with both.

The Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development is now pushing for higher harvests more through increasing productivity than hectarage, that is making a kilogramme of seed and a kilogramme of fertiliser produce more, thus spreading the costs of these essential inputs among larger sales. Here there is much room for improvement by many farmers, and where the main thrust now needs to be made.