Ironically, although Zimbabwe is clamouring for foreign direct investment, AMA, which was established to regulate the participation in production, buying and processing of agricultural products in Zimbabwe, says it is worried about the entry of international seed companies into the Zimbabwean market since 2009 as this has long term adverse effects on the cost of seed.
“It reduces farmers’ choices on seed lines, as resilient but possibly low profitable varieties will gradually be phased out,” AMA says.
The biggest seed companies in the word, known as the Big Six, are now operating in Zimbabwe.
French company Limagrain has a 25 percent stake in Seed Co, the biggest Zimbabwean seed company with 44.4 percent of the market share.
Du Pont which used to be second largest seed company in the world, owns Pannar and Pioneer.
Monsato, the biggest seed company in the world, wholly owns Tocek, which at the moment only has 1.5 percent of the Zimbabwe market.
AMA says the entry of these big companies, also known as consolidation, will gradually erode the farmers’ ability to produce food free from the heavy reliance on these international corporates.
The move is also likely to see a shift in both public and private research from self-producing crops such as pulses and tuber crops to the most profitable proprietary crops, it says.
It will also result in the loss of cultural knowledge to save seed and increase expenditure on off-farm inputs like chemicals and machinery and fuels.
It will also result in a decline in competition for prices and restrictions on seed output to maintain profit margins.
AMA says the entry of international seed companies will limit farmers’ choice by reducing access to non-patented seed varieties.
In short, the days of using seed from the “granary” are numbered.
The consolidation is also likely to lead to the entry into the Zimbabwean market of chemical and fertilizer oligopolies.
Already Germany’s Bayer has merged with Monsato making it the biggest agro-chemical company in the world.
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