Manicaland Bureau
The easing of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions has brought relief to banana farmers here, with access to markets significantly better, although they say low prices have a negative impact on profits.

When Government announced the first lockdown in March this year, agriculture was declared an essential service and farmers were allowed to take their produce to markets.

But transporters charged high fees.

In Mutare, the decentralisation of the vegetable markets from Sakubva Musika to Chikanga, Dangamvura and Hobhouse brought additional transport costs for the farmers.

As a result, farmers in Chimanimani had to wait for middlemen to buy the crop and then take the bananas to markets in Mutare, Harare, Gweru, Bulawayo and Beitbridge.

Those in Honde Valley have been selling their produce to local agro-marketing company, Brands Fresh, although uptake went down significantly during that time.

The farmers said they started selling more volumes from September and they are hoping to continue increasing sales.

Mr Michael Mutsamwira from Mandeya village in Honde Valley said sales had risen from about 10 tonnes per month to about 100 tonnes and he hoped to increase volumes to 160 tonnes.

“During the lockdown, we could not sell our bananas,” he said. “As a result, most of them would mature in the field and we made big losses as we had to throw away tonnes of bananas that had gone bad.

“Now that the market has improved, our incomes are improving and we hope to continue on this path.”

Mr Mutsamwira said an oversupply of the fruit was negatively impacting on prices, resulting in lower than anticipated profits.

A kilogramme of banana has gone down from US$0,20 to about US$0,17 in the last few weeks.

Mrs Jane Mukupe from Honde Valley said the low price being offered by buyers was a setback they had not anticipated.

“Although our sales have improved significantly, the prices have actually gone down and we are not happy at all,” she said. “My profits are still low and I hope that the price changes soon because banana production is a business and we should be making good money from it.”

Another farmer from Chimanimani, Mr Andrew Gutu, said the inputs and labour costs they were channelling into the banana fields were not commensurate with the profits they were making.

“The money we put into inputs and the labour is too much compared to what we are getting,” he said. “We really hope prices change soon so that we can at least make some profit.”

The farmers expressed hope that they would be capacitated to value add their produce so that they can make more profits.