Made urges contractors to fully fund farming

BY BUSINESS REPORTER

In his contribution to the high-level conference on financing agriculture last week, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development minister Joseph Made said the biggest challenge facing farmers was that some contractors were partially funding the crop.

“Contractors must fund fully the crop so that the farmer does not remain with contested crop,” he said.

“AfDB should study contract farming as a model to ensure that farmers are not torn apart. Also if it is a model [to undertake] there should be a strong monitoring mechanism.”

Contract farming is credited with boosting output especially of tobacco in Zimbabwe in the absence of financing from banks due to the perceived risk of the agriculture sector.

However, it has also brought hardships to farmers who are sometimes ripped off by contractors through low prices.

This has seen farmers resorting to side-marketing thereby short-changing the contractor.

The high-level conference resolved a scaling-up in financing for agriculture to boost output.

AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina said the institution was going to facilitate risk sharing thereby reducing risks for commercial banks and micro-finance institutions that lend to the agricultural sector.

Adesina said AfDB would finance countries so that they would have necessary insurance against climate change.