SPEECH
PRESIDENT OF THE ZAMBIA NATIONAL FARMERS UNION DR. EVELYN NGULEKA
First of all I would like to acknowledge the presence of the Minister in absentia. I know that he was probably held up by some busy schedules, but I hope that he will be able to come and be with us today. All Government officials that are present in our midst, I would like to recognise the presence of the Mayor of Harare, all the different Excellencies from the Embassies and now allow me to be a little bit bias and acknowledge the presence of the Deputy Ambassador of the Embassy of Zambia Mr Mushili, who has come to give me support and make sure that I don’t speak nonsense! So thank you very much Mr Mushili, for taking time and being with the farmers of Zimbabwe, the representatives from AgriSA, my colleagues from there. I do not know if there are other farmer’s organisations who are present, apart from South Africa and Zambia in our midst.
As it has been said, my name is Evelyn Nguleka. I am current the President of the Zambia National Farmers Union and also the President of the World Farmers Organisation. For some of you who might not be aware of what the World Farmers Organisation is, but by virtue of being members of the CFU, you are actually my members, because CFU is a member of the World Farmers Organisation. I am privileged to the opportunity to come and meet you once again.
It is not the first time I am coming to Zimbabwe, so it was very good to see a number of familiar faces. But to those of you who are not farmers, I would like to tell you that one characteristic that farmers have and that is resilience. Farmers do not give up easily. I would have expected to find a room half full with farmers, but I am encouraged to see that the house is almost overflowing, with members and farmers still alive. So thank you very much for holding the flag high and making Zimbabwe still a sovereign nation.
The topic that has been given to me today, I think is very unfair. “How does Zimbabwe unlock its potential and move forward”. To start with I do not like the word “potential”. I do not know how often you use it here. In my country Zambia, it is overused.
We are aware of how privileged and blessed our countries are, because we have the land, we have the water and we have the human resource, but for one reason or another we have not taken advantage of these. So for this word “potential”, should no longer be a menu that we should be discussing. We have to actualise what we have to be able to move forward.
As a farmer, I know that there is no country that will be able to stand proud without farmers, and I know that Zimbabwe is no exception, and I am not saying this because I am a farmer myself, but because I know that no stomach understands constitution, currency or anything else that we present to them. The stomach wants food and an empty stomach, ladies and gentlemen does not understand peace, so whatever we do, if we have to move forward as a nation in Zimbabwe, the first thing we have to do is make sure that our people are well fed and not just fed, but well nourished. But coming from the WFO, it is saddening.
Now unfortunately I will have to direct all of my complaints to the Mayor, because the Minister is not around, and I hope that the Mayor will be able to pass on our messages to the Minister.
The world currently and not just Zimbabwe is battling to feed its people and I am sure Zimbabwe is not an exception. Every night there are millions of people that go hungry; sleep with a completely empty stomach, without a single meal of food. Does that mean that the farmers of this world are not doing what they should be doing? I do not think so.
The farmers you see here, Mr Mayor, have every potential and every passion and every love and sincerity to be able to produce food for our people. Unfortunately we cannot do it in isolation. There are a number of things that we need as farmers to be able to move on.
By the year 2030, we are going to have more people on the planet, 9.2 billion. If we cannot feed the people who are alive today. How are we going to be able to take care of the people that will be with us in the next 15 years? So the population is growing. If things were right, then farmers should be excited. Farmers would be excited that our produce will be bought and we should be excited that we have the market. But unfortunately us farmers, are unable to produce, or in instances where we are able to produce, that food does not reach the people who need it.
Honourable Mayor, I believe that it starts with each country to be food secure. Even before we start discussing trade. We have to make sure that each and every country if food secure. In my community everybody should be able to afford, not only food, but proper nutrition. We are discussing of late people who are sleeping hungry and at the same time we are complaining about people who are under nourished. There is a very big imbalance and that needs to be sorted out. Most of our farmers, Mr Mayor, are in areas where they are not able to produce food that will reach its intended markets. That will be partly because of infrastructure and therefore my appeal is let us start with each and every country policies.
Are the policies in our countries supporting agriculture? I am very deeply saddened, to find that when you are out there in the world, everybody is talking about the potential that Africa has and yet ourselves in Africa are not able to take advantage of this opportunity. Why have we failed to produce, when there is no much abundant land and water?
Unfortunately, we are now talking about climate change, which has even taken away the water that we had previously. So when I speak about policies Honourable Mayor, Policies have to be consistent. A farmer needs to plan. If a farmer is going to feed a nation, a farmer needs to be sure that what they are doing today, they can do tomorrow and they can be able to do for the next generation. If the policies do not assure us of what our lives are going to be tomorrow, it is very difficult Honourable Mayor, for us farmers to put our efforts wholeheartedly in what we do.
So as we appeal to you, that as you discuss, as you formulate policies that govern our nation, consider the farms. Consider the people who are producing the food, that they have policies that protect them and give them confidence to be able to produce food for the next generation, so that they can be able to do it with pride and dignity. If a farmer cannot even be able to send his children to school and pay their own medical bills, I do not think that a farmer will be able to think about the next generation, or the next person.
As a farmer, as much as we want to produce, farming is a business and that is something that Government and every farmer needs to know that farming is not a home, it is not merely a lifestyle, farming is a business. We also need to make money from what we do and therefore the policies need to be develop, to develop in such a manner.
Talking about policies that are going to enhance agriculture. I would like to talk about how easy is it for a farmer to get some incentives from governments to be able to produce. The sectors that make the production of food cheap enough so that we are able to be competitive on the market, so that we are able to provide food for the people, and be able to make a living out of it. We need proper infrastructure in our areas, so that we can be able to develop agriculture.
At this point, Honourable Mayor, farmers need to move with moving technologies. As I stand here, I see a lot of initiatives and a lot of innovation, but I do not see and feel that these have been utilised yet and unfortunately when I look at the farmers in Zimbabwe, which is the same as when I look at the farmers in Zambia, I do not see the youth.
That tells you a story. Are we attractive enough?
Why is every child deciding to be a lawyer or a medical doctor or a nurse or a teacher and none of them want to be a farmer? That is because they know farming has become a poverty trap. But Honourable Mayor, if we are not able to lure these young people into agriculture, technology will also escape us.
If I gave a gadget to my friend Pete there and asked him to make an App to be able to transmit information to all the farmers seated here, he would not be able to do anything with it. If we gave a youth a gadget and told them what we want, by the end of the day they will give us technology that will be able to make all of us able to communicate. These are the people that we need to be able to attract into agriculture. For as long as the youth are not attracted to agriculture we are doomed.
Climate change is not a myth anymore. Climate change is real.
Last season, I am sure Zimbabwe and Zambia experienced the real reality of the effect of climate change and I believe that if involve proper innovation, if we are able to tap into technologies that are available, we will not fail to produce for our people.
It is not actually sudden that we have fresh waters in our country. Think about countries like Saudi Arabia, they do not have fresh waters, but they do produce food. However that needs technology and unfortunately Hon Mayor, technology costs money and we do not have the incentives to be able to borrow that money, from Governments, from institutions as farmers to be able to help us produce that food. We appeal that we need to be able to borrow that money, to be able to get grants, to be able to have access to the water and to the land, so that we are able to produce food for our people, and that is the only way we are going to make innovation a reality.
So my fellow farmers this morning, I would like to challenge you that as a farmer I do not care how big your farm is. I do not care how small your farm is. Whether you are doing, crops or whether you are doing livestock. The bottom line is how efficiently are you operating?
That is what is going to make us survive. We need to be more efficient than we were years ago. For that, there is no one person that can produce food for everyone else. This is a time where we need to share, knowledge with one another. In the communities where we are living, how are we transferring this knowledge. How are we teaching the people that live next door to us of the technologies of the information that we gather and be able to make sure that we have food, even before we put it on the market?
Mechanisation is critical.
Africa, for a very long time, has been left behind, because we have not been mechanised well enough. I know that at one point, Zimbabwe was very well mechanised. I do not see the centre pivots that I used to see when I drive on the roads in Zimbabwe anymore. That needs to be revitalised.
We cannot survive without mechanisation. We need to hear those tractors and combine harvesters running for us to be able to produce food. Let us not sit down and complain that we are importing every bit of our food. For every grain of wheat that Zimbabwe imports, it affects the national treasury. Therefore, if Zimbabwe is able to produce that grain, if Zimbabwe is able to produce that maize, with the mechanisation, I believe the treasury can be saved for other things that we are not able to buy.
So as farmers, I challenge you to share the knowledge you have as farmers. We need to start attracting the young people and making sure that they are part of the business.
Markets.
As farmers we produce commodities and unfortunately farmers are always stuck in the middle. For a very long time we are price takers, we do not control the inputs, the input commodities. In Zambia and Zimbabwe we are in the same boat, as we are importing fertilizer and chemicals which are not produced in our own countries. Therefore a farmer is a price taker.
On the other hand, producers tell us we cannot sell food over a certain price. So the consumer also demands to be able to get commodities and food at a certain price, and the farmer is struck right in between.
The puzzle is this. In Africa, more than 65% of our population is agriculture based. If the farmer remains poor, Honourable Mayor, our countries will remain poor. If agriculture is not prioritised, then there is nothing that a Government will be able to do to make its economy move, because the majority of the population will be poor.
I am aware that Zimbabwe has minerals. I have travelled, and been to a number of countries, and I have had the privilege of meeting with Honourable President Mugabe at the United Nations and none of us were saved any platinum or gold for food. We all depended on farmers to be fed. That is how important we are. So it does not matter how many minerals you have, at the end of the day, what should be able to talk to us, to drive our economies, is the food that we have in our countries. Because the gold, the diamonds, the platinum will still have no effect on our economy, if we do not have food.
Honourable Mayor, help us to be able to stop this division, one of the size of our funds, the colour of our skin of the productivity of the type of crop that we do, and be able to be what we are. All we want is to be farmers, regardless of where we are. Then we will be able to make sure that this country takes back its place, as one of the bread baskets of the country.
I am sure the Ambassador will not be very happy, because I should be saying that to the Zambian farmers, not to the Zimbabwean farmers. I believe that if Zimbabwe does not have food, Zambia is in problems. Therefore we need each other. We need the Zimbabwean farmers to be able to farm the way they used to farm.
We need Zimbabwe to be able to produce its own food, then together as a SADC region, as COMESA and now our governments have even included the East, we are now put together with everybody from Egypt, where the technologies are way beyond us, to be able to trade under free market, how are we going to survive, if the conditions in our own countries do not enable us to be profitable.
All we ask is to have incentives that are going to make us be able to make a living out of what we do. Can we have some confidence coming from Government to the farmer and that begins Honourable Mayor, with walking the talk. It is time that when we sit down with our policy makers, when we agree on a road map with our policy makers, we plead that what we agree upon with our policy makers should be actualised.
I think we have had meetings, we have talked, we have strategized, but we have not acted on these strategies. As long as we continue talking about what Zimbabwe should be able to do, we are not going to be able to produce the food. So Honourable Mayor, you have a number of documents, you have a number of letters, that come from these farmers that sit here, to be able to make them efficient. My plea as a representative of the World Farmers Organisation is that may you kindly….. (Entry of the Honourable Minister.)
Thank you very much Honourable Minister for joining us, unfortunately I am at the very end of my plea, and I hope that the Mayor will be able to amply represent me and my farmers to you for the theme that we have asked.
My name is Evelyn Nguleka, I am the President of the World Farmers Organisation and CFU is a member of the World Farmers Organisation. In summary I would like to say that Zimbabwe has the potential to turn around the economy. Zimbabwe has the land, Zimbabwe has the water, and Zimbabwe has the human capacity to be able to provide.
What we need from your Honourable Minister is to walk with us. We need policies that will give incentives to farmers to be able to produce food for this country. If we are not able to produce food for this country, nobody else will be able to do that.
I was just saying that it does not matter how many minerals that you mine from Zimbabwe, for as long as Zimbabwe does not produce food, it will be very difficult to attain sovereignty and totality, because an empty stomach does not understand peace. An empty stomach asks for nothing but food.
The answers Honourable Minister are in the people that are seated here. So walk with us, listen to us, and we are not dictating things to you, what we are saying is let us walk together, we want to develop partnerships, as you govern this country, we want to be partners together with you to make sure that our country, our continent, can contribute to the global food production that everyone is talking about in 2013.
When we look at global change now and when we look at climate change and when we look at the population boom, Africa is the only place food can be produced. Therefore we need these people to be able to have the capacity to produce that food.
So thank you very much for giving me this opportunity and I hope that our Mayor and the Minister will be able to make us able to produce food for our country.
I thank you.