Zimbabwe says it has enough cash to buy record maize crop

HON. T. MOYO: My supplementary question to the Hon Minister is that, what protection is given to farmers who are located far away from GMB? In rural areas, we have farmers who are farming 40 to 50 km away from GMB and those are being affected by agents who are doing side marketing. It is sad that some farmers are losing their grain for as little as US$2 per 20kg. What measures are being put in place by Government to make sure that those farmers are adequately protected? I thank you.

HON. PROF. M. NCUBE: I urge all farmers not to sell their produce to makoronyera. Makoronyera vakawanda uye vakachenjera. They will offer you all manner of sweeteners and so forth and then they fleece you of the good returns that you have rightfully earned. Losing US$2 is quite a lot. I really urge them not to be cheated by makoronyera. We will do a better job ourselves as Government to make sure that the farmers can access the depot points to deposit their grain and support them with transportation. We will work together with the Ministry of Agriculture to do this. At the end of the day, I think the best policeman or woman for a farmer when it is their produce that is at stake, it is for them to just refuse, that is policing enough and say no we will sell through the official structures/channels and it is up to us to really support them and make sure that they can deliver to GMB successfully and subsidise the cost of transportation.

I think the price is not bad – for maize, we are paying the same price as of last year, which is around $32 000.00 per metric tonne. It is a very good price in USD$ terms because we have kept the Zimbabwe dollar stable. So it is retaining value and there is value in it.  So we think we are offering a good price and people should really shy away from makoronyera because they are very crafty at this game.

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