Wheat harvesting faces equipment shortage

THE 2018 wheat crop once again faces challenges as farmers fail to acquire combine harvesters on time.
Industry experts indicated that because of such challenges, including theft of aluminium pipes on farms last year, many farmers had opted out of wheat growing this year due to frustrations.
“There is a serious shortage of combine harvesters in the country now, worse still for combines with wheat heads. Most of the planted wheat last year could not be taken out before the rains and almost half was rained. Once it has been rained, wheat can no longer be used for making bread, but for stock feed instead. This discouraged a lot of farmers who did not even go into wheat production this year, despite the Command Wheat programme,” said Peter Gambara, an agricultural economist.
To solve the problem, government last year promised to bring in combine harvesters and centre pivots for irrigation from Spain.
The $6 million centre pivots sourced from Spain are said to have been distributed but never reached the intended beneficiaries.
“Centre pivots are also the way around the theft of aluminium pipes as the structure is made of iron,” Gambara said.
Under the Command Wheat programme, government wanted to provide the $5 million funding for farmers to replace their irrigation equipment resulting in reduced wheat hectarage.
Instead of the planned 50 000 hectares at four tonnes per hectare, about 37 000 hectares was planted resulting in an output of about 120 000 tonnes of wheat.
Without the combine harvesters, the late harvesting of the winter crop pushes the summer season planting dates further.
“Local production can produce about half of our requirements national requirements, 200 000 tonnes but a lot of effort is required to convince farmers to go into wheat production. Also, a lot of effort is required to rehabilitate non-working or potential irrigation infrastructure that is lying idle. It requires coordinated effort, not the piecemeal approach we have at the moment. The Department of Irrigation under Ministry of Agriculture is simply overwhelmed and cannot cope. The Mechanisation Department should be spearheading the issue of combine harvesters but it is equally useless and needs serious revamping,” the agronomist added.
The area planted to wheat over the past few years has declined to between 12 000 to 15 000 hectares per year as farmers faced a host of challenges. The Command Wheat programme’s target is to reach 50 000 hectares
Government has been trying to resolve the mechanisation problem through various agricultural mechanisation programmes. The programmes have failed dismally as equipment failed to reach the intended beneficiaries. Government even failed to recover over $198 million from farmers who benefited under the mechanisation programme. The then Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, told parliament that there was no ‘political will’ to recover debts from beneficiaries.
During the land reform programme 25 000 tractors were destroyed, some stolen and 300 000 hectares of irrigation was destroyed.
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