EDITORIAL COMMENT

REVELATIONS that there has been a 55% drop in tobacco seed sales can only mean one thing: Disaster is looming for the country in the forthcoming summer cropping season.

Agriculture is one sector that is so delicate that any slipup in terms of planning and preparation spells doom.

Since year 2000, this is one of the lessons that the country, at large, has failed to learn and season after season has been a complete disaster; and has seen citizens of the once breadbasket of Africa perennially going hungry for the past two decades.

Without the requisite inputs, farming is a waste of time.

Revealing why the tobacco farmers are failing to adequately prepare, the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association chief executive Rodney Ambrose said: “Poor prices (at the auction floors) are said to have affected the preparations of seedbeds for the coming crop.

These seedbeds should have been planted in June, but many growers were not in a good enough financial position to start the process. So, more bad news might be on the way. We sincerely hope seed sales and farmers’ crop preparations improve in the next month.”

Hopeful, yes we will remain, but this might just be hoping against hope because a month behind schedule means that the tobacco crop risks failing to properly mature, given the unpredictable weather patterns the region has been experiencing at a time when talk of irrigation is just a pipe dream.

We shudder to imagine what lies ahead for Zimbabwe if tobacco farmers, who have at least managed to harvest something for sale, have not been able to adequately prepare for the next cropping season. What does the next season hold for the other farmers engaged in other crops such as maize, who hardly harvested anything last season following a devastating drought?

And once again, like a curse that refuses to go away, indications are that the country faces hunger next year. Why? The reason is simply because farmers are incapacitated to go back to the field. Tobacco farmers were offered peanuts for their crop and other farmers, especially for maize, did not harvest enough to sell to raise sufficient capital for inputs. Besides, the country’s cash crisis has moved several gears up for the farmers after government banned the use of foreign currencies at a time the local currency has continued to weaken against the hard currencies.

To make matters worse, monetary authorities in the country tell us that they have tightened their belts and drastically cut back on government spending, which means farmers should not expect any freebies such as the presidential input scheme that they have relied on over the years, albeit the programme being a feeding trough for looters. We just hope that government is aware of the challenges confronting the farmers this coming season; otherwise disaster looms large.