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Mr Musarara

Elita Chikwati Agriculture Reporter
Local millers and bakers have signed a memorandum of understanding that will see bakers buying 220 000 tonnes of flour annually.
Under the agreement, the bakers will buy 75 percent of their monthly flour requirements from local millers. The agreement is expected to resuscitate wheat growing in Zimbabwe which has been experiencing several challenges, chief among them lack of funding.
Speaking after the signing ceremony Grain Millers Association president, Mr Tafadzwa Musarara said forward sale agreements would be entered into between individual bakers and millers. The agreements are expected to run for a period of not less than six months.

“Millers will now take advantage of this deal to fund wheat contract farming so that 60 percent or more of the required wheat is obtained locally,’’ he said.
National Bakers Association spokesman, Mr David Muchinguri said local millers and bakers were more interested in funding local farmers by providing market for their produce.

“We do not want to support farmers from others countries through imports. We would want to buy the bulk of our flour from local millers,” he said.
Secretary for Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, Mr Ngoni Masoka said the ministry would come up with a Statutory Instrument to guide wheat contract farming.

“It is very important what millers and bakers have done to sign an agreement that once wheat is grown it has a market.
“We would like to encourage contract farming in the whole agriculture sector. We want the users of the product to finance the farmers so that the product is properly grown.

“We cannot leave the production to farmers alone. We would want to see what is happening in tobacco where small holder farmers are being financed by companies.
“That is what we want for most crops and products in agriculture, including livestock,” he said.

He said players in the agriculture industry, through the Agricultural Marketing Authority, have been consulting stakeholders to come up with a fine structure on how best wheat can be produced under contract farming.