Paul Zakariya
THE Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union is targeting nearly $200 million worth of exports from the horticulture industry by 2020.
The union wants the sector to be the second biggest export earner in agriculture after tobacco.
This will also help Zimbabwe reclaim its position as Africa’s second biggest horticulture producer after Kenya.
Horticulture is Zimbabwe’s fourth largest agriculture export earner at seven percent. Tobacco comes first accounting, for 64 percent of agriculture export earnings followed by cotton at 16 percent and sugar at nine percent.
ZFU executive director, Mr Paul Zakariya, said his organisation was organising farmers into groups and commodity associations to improve service delivery, access to domestic and regional markets.
One of the groups under ZFU is the Zimbabwe National Horticulture Producers’ Association, which has structures from ward to national level that facilitate trainings to enhance competitiveness and market linkages.
“We hope to surpass the 1999 peak export earnings of $199 million so that the sector regains its long standing second position on agriculture export earnings,” said Mr Zakariya.
“In terms of production volumes, we want to reach a situation where we regain our status as the leading fresh produce supplier on the continent and beyond. This can only happen if farmers’ skills and standards of production are improved, which ZFU is doing.”
The sector is now on a recovery path with $96 million worth of exports achieved in 2015 before further increasing to $83 million in 2016.
An up-and-coming horticulture producer, Ms Nyunyai Machiwenyika, said there were vast opportunities for growth of horticulture in Zimbabwe if adequate support was made available to start up farmers.
Demand for both greenhouse and open field produce was high in Zimbabwe and the region creating scope to tap into the market.
Apart from the high cost of production, Machiwenyika indicated that basic knowledge of production, diseases outbreaks and treatment were a necessity in horticulture.
Mr Zakariya said the local sector also needed quality assurance system to fully penetrate the high export value markets such as Europe.
Trade promotion body, ZimTrade has stepped up efforts to promote the sector’s competitiveness and create linkages for export markets.
The organisation signed a memorandum of understanding last year with PUM Netherlands to assist both individual and group farmers through providing expert advice on planning, agro production issues such as variety selection, market intelligence or market linkages.
PUM will bring experts to local producers based on identified gaps in knowledge by the farmers themselves.
To date, the programme has assisted a number of value chains that include onions, flowers, fruits, vegetables, mushroom, sesame out grower schemes and cereals with expert advice on production, packaging and identification of export markets. –BH24