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Dr Made

Sydney Kawadza Senior Reporter
Grain deliveries from maize grown under the Special Maize Programme for Import Substitution also known as Command Agriculture are set to increase as harvesting reaches its peak this month and August.

Government has also moved in to secure grain being harvested by sending its officials to assist beneficiaries on the correct moisture content.

This follows reports that maize grown under Command Agriculture was being lost to the parallel market after being rejected by the GMB for high moisture content.

In an interview recently, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister Dr Joseph Made said farmers had used the long-season maize varieties with high yields with harvesting starting this month.

“The main harvesting period for long-season varieties is the end of June. We will now go into full swing in July and August.”

Minister Made also urged farmers to consider strip harvesting so that they allow all their maize to dry evenly before harvesting.

“Moisture content is different in the various areas of the fields. Farmers using combine harvesters open up channels within the fields to allow natural drying of the maize,” he said.

GMB Chegutu depot manager Mr Musekiwa Zanza revealed that they had increased grain deliveries to at least 500 tonnes per day.

He was speaking early this week during Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s visit to GMB depots in Mashonaland on Tuesday last week.

Mr Zanza said the Chegutu depot had so far received more than 12 000 tonnes of maize from farmers.

The depot has a 68 000 tonne storage capacity.

He said grain deliveries are expected to increase as they move in to assist farmers measure the grain moisture content before their deliveries to GMB.

“We are visiting the farmers to assess the moisture content of their maize crop so that they do not waste resources delivering grain that would be rejected for high content levels,” he said.

Mr Zanza said some of the farmers are sending representative samples testing before they deliver their maize.

“We urge the farmers to bring representative samples of 2-3 kilogrammes, which represents their yield, and we test this before the farmer is cleared to deliver the maize,” he said.

The depot manager called for Government to invest in artificial driers at the GMB sites so that they can dry grain with high moisture content.

Mr Zanza also bemoaned power outages that affect their operations calling for the installation of 350kV generators to mitigate the challenges.

“Farmers are eager to deliver their maize to GMB, but the main challenge is the poor road infrastructure, which is affecting transportation of grain to the depot,” he said.

Farmers across Zimbabwe have already delivered more than 100 000 tonnes of maize as of last week with 500 000 tonnes expected to have been delivered by the end of this month.

GMB has also paid $25 million to farmers, who have delivered their maize to the national granary.

The final Government-sponsored crop and livestock assessment report says Zimbabwe is expecting to harvest four million tonnes of food crops from the 2016-17 agricultural season.

This means that the country will have a surplus of one million tonnes of food crops.

The food crops include maize, sorghum, millet, roundnuts, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, cowpeas, squash, sugarbeans and pumpkins.

Minister Made said the expected maize production will exceed 2,155 million tonnes, which is an increase of 321 percent from the 800 000 tonnes harvested during the 2015-16 agricultural season.

Adding small grains, the expected production will be more than 2,5 million tonnes against human consumption requirement per year of 1,5 million tonnes.

At least 1 300 tonnes of small grains had also been delivered.