Elita Chikwati Harare Bureau
Farmers have planted 8,000 hectares of wheat this winter season as production continues to decline due to several challenges affecting the farming industry.

Zimbabwe Farmers Union executive director Paul Zakariya said last season farmers planted around 11,000 hectares of wheat.

He said production was declining every season due to erratic power supplies, high water rates and unavailability of viable markets.

Zakariya said it did not make economic sense for farmers to continue growing the crop, which was associated with high production costs.

“The production costs are high. Sometimes electricity isn’t available when the crop requires irrigation. Some farmers have tried using generators but this increases costs of production,” he said. “The water charges from Zinwa are also high and farmers can’t afford them. A few traditional farmers are still growing the crop but not on commercial basis,” he added.

Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union (ZFU)president, Wonder Chabikwa said some farmers continued planting when the window period had already gone. “We don’t encourage farmers to plant wheat late as they’ll incur losses. Normally the late crop is affected by the early rains,” he said.

A number of farmers have switched from wheat due to high costs. Financial institutions prefer to fund tobacco which has an organised market than wheat that is associated with high risk. This season the government released $9,8 million to pay wheat farmers who delivered their crop to the Grain Marketing Board last season so that they could buy inputs.

Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister Joseph Made said the payments were made to ensure farmers were able to finance their operations.

He said the government was also working on assisting wheat farmers this season. “We’re taking stock of wheat farmers who’ve started planting. Soon, we’ll be announcing assistance given to farmers who’ve planted wheat.We’ll assist them with a loan facility for top dressing fertilisers but the assistance will only be open to those farmers whose crop has germinated,” he said.

Minister Made said staff from the department of irrigation would record all farmers who had started planting through field inspections.

Zimbabwe requires between 350,000 and 450,000 tonnes of wheat a year.