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production is not viable because of high costs of elec­tricity, which is not available most of the times. Although wheat is not easy to grow, we cannot wholly depend on imports,” he said.
Mr Chabikwa said the pricing of elec­tricity was not fair as it was burdening farmers.
“Farmers are just treated like any other user yet they are producing food. At least they should be subsidised and be given preference,” he said.
However, Goromonzi North legisla­tor and farmer Cde Paddy Zhanda said the three factors should be addressed if wheat production was to be viable.
He said energy was one of the major problems affecting farmers.
“We cannot talk of alternative crops especially if the crops are irrigated. Even if farmers are to switch to potato pro­duction, the crop still needs to be irri­gated and there is no way a farmer can fully irrigate the crop without electric­ity,” he said.
Cde Zhanda said the cost of financ­ing in this country was prohibitive and that needed to be addressed. He said farmers were failing to get loans from financial institutions because the money was costly. Local financial insti­tutions offer short-term loans, which attract high interest. Cde Zhanda said the other issue that was affecting local wheat production was lack of markets.
“There is nowhere you can talk of agriculture without markets.”
He challenged Government to come up with a clear agricultural policy that would make farming viable. Zimbabwe National Farmers Union secretary for Mazowe, Mr Garikayi Msika said farm­ers were not producing wheat because of the erratic supply of electricity.
“Wheat is a viable crop if produced accordingly. Farmers can produce wheat yields of up to five tonnes per hectare provided they get correct inputs at the correct time, land preparations are done on time and there is adequate irrigation.
“In terms of irrigation, power is not the only challenge but even the irriga­tion equipment is of importance. Farm­ers should be equipped with adequate irrigation equipment and production will be viable,” he said.
Mr Msika said local seed producers were producing competitive high qual­ity seed which has good disease toler­ance rates.
“In the past we used to make money during the winter season due to wheat production. The country used to import less wheat for blending and we can still go back to that if all things are put in place,” he said.
Mr Msika complained that Zesa Holdings had failed farmers for the past years leading to the drastic reduction in wheat production.
“Zesa used to promise to reduce load shedding to farming areas which was never done. We were not given priority and many farmers failed to complete irrigation cycles,” complained Mr Msika.
Wheat production has been on the decline for the past years.
This year, farmers planted 8 000 hectares of the crop and this was produced mainly by well-established farmers who do not wait for Government input pro­grammes.