As planting season approaches, Zimbabwe is pulling all the stops to assure farmers of the availability of crucial farming inputs.
Agriculture season and land preparation begins in earnest at the end of September going into October, and government is going the extra mile to cushion farmers from panicking. The ministry of agriculture has assured the nation about the availability of fertiliser, one of the major inputs government has in recent years said will help boost food production.
During a recent tour of one of the country’s major fertiliser manufacturing companies, the agriculture ministry told journalists that prices of fertiliser had gone down significantly this year.
This was after the war in Ukraine, a major global fertiliser manufacturing hub, drove prices sky high resulting in farmers in poor African countries to struggle in getting the vital input.
In the past two years, a tonne of fertiliser soared to USD1 600, chocking importers and local farmers as farming became an increasingly expensive undertaking.
This also drove the prices of basic commodities such as grain as, local producers failed to meet national food production targets.
Now the current price of a tonne of fertiliser has gone down to USD600, according to Lands and Agriculture Permanent Secretary Obert Jiri.
This massive reduction which Obert says is partly thanks to local production should be music to the ears of farmers who are already reeling under tough production conditions with some farmers reportedly reducing their hectarage in recent years.
“When the Russia-Ukraine war started, the fertiliser prices shot to about USD1 600 a tonne, but ever since, now we are looking at around US$600 a tonne,” Obert said.
“There has been a massive reduction in the price of fertiliser, not only because of the supply from the Middle East, but also from strategies such as these, where we have said, let us do local production,” he added.
It is still early days to assess whether farmers will derive any dividend from this development, but it is
skepticism galore for Pholisile Ncube, a farmer whose primary interest has for years been growing the staple maize.
“Prices of everything are insane. I have been shopping around for fertiliser and it is not encouraging as we approach October,” said Ncube who resides in the city of Bulawayo and maintains a piece of land out of town. A quick survey of city retail outlets showed that the falling of fertiliser tonnage prices is yet to trickle down to the ordinary farmer.
At one shop, a 50 kg bag of compound D fertiliser cost USD35 while ammonium nitrate stood at USD46 as of mid-September in a country where the breadbasket for a family of six hovers between USD450 and USD500, according to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe.
The ministry of agriculture has assured the nation about the availability of fertiliser, one of the major inputs government has in recent years said will help boost food production.
“We have to balance between buying fertiliser and buying food when all we want is to grow our own maize so we can get mealie meal,” Ncube said, expressing a comment sentiment here where economic hardships are presenting tough choices for millions.
However, fertiliser manufacturers say to maintain the price stabilisation, government must do more to support local production.
“In terms of the supply chain, wehave seen a few shortages of ammonium nitrate, but nothing that is going to affect our country,” said Sean Durrad SuperFert General Manager whose plant Obert toured.
“We have the raw materials procured to deliver into this programme to the full capacity to which we have been contracted,” Sean said.
Government says it is doing all it can to support local fertiliser producers, despite industrial size manufacturers facing a litany of challenges such as power outages and high raw materials import bills.
“We want to continue that route, where we are saying let us get more and more local raw material support, in which the 40% can get to 80%, 90% and eventually full production, local production here in the country,” Obert said.
Early this year, government announced that Zimbabwe was set to be a major fertiliser manufacturing hub on the back of plans to reboot the African Centre for Fertiliser Development which was set up by the African Union.
The centre located in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, was established in the 1980s but has not functioned to full capacity.
For now it remains to be seen whether the reported drop in fertiliser prices is a harbinger towards full grain silos at a time the country desperately needs the tonic amid continued grain imports.
