Bureaucratic bungling, poor planning to affect wheat hectarage

Source: Bureaucratic bungling, poor planning to affect wheat hectarage | The Financial Gazette June 1, 2017

By Peter Gambara

IT is highly unlikely that the targeted area of 50 000 hectares will be achieved now that the winter wheat planting season has closed as farmers continue to face a lot of challenges.
The winter planting period traditionally started on May 1 and closed on May 30; however, a few farmers may take the risk of continuing to plant into June.

Wheat takes five months to mature and those who plant around May 15 expect to harvest around October 15.
Those who take the risk to continue planting into June risk having their crop damaged by early October and November rains.

Late harvesting of the winter crop also pushes the summer season planting dates further.
Most farmers are faced with a challenge of failing to quickly remove the summer maize crop to pave way for the wheat crop, as the moisture level on the maize is still high.
The Grain Marketing Board (GMB) only accepts maize with a moisture level of 12 percent, but most of the maize is still way above that moisture level.

Farmers could have harvested the crop and placed it in driers, but the huge area planted to maize this season, means the few driers that are available cannot cope with the demand.
Government previously indicated its willingness to repair some non-functional driers that are located on the farms, but this never materialised and farmers are, therefore, stuck with their maize.
Firstly, there is a serious shortage of combine harvesters on the market.
Government went around the farms listing farmers who own combine harvesters and offering to contract them to work with the Command Agriculture contracted farmers.

These combines are too few and in some cases, they do not have maize heads.
Up to now, government has also failed to come up with the necessary arrangements on how contracted farmers can hire the listed harvesters.

Farmers should ideally get vouchers they can use to get a service from a service provider; government would then pay the service provider.

However, these vouchers are still not available and it is not a secret that farmers do not have the funds to hire the harvesters because they are yet to sell their summer crops.
To make matters worse, most farmers opted for the long season maize varieties such as SC727 or SC719, which require up to 158 days to mature.

Therefore a crop that was established around mid-November would only reach physiological maturity around April 22.
That crop would still require another three to four weeks to dry and therefore most of that crop is still too wet to meet the 12 percent moisture level desired at GMB.

The recent rains also worsened the situation for most farmers as the maize absorbed more moisture from those rains.
However, the planting period is fast closing and farmers are in a dilemma as to what to do
It is getting too late for those farmers intending to grow wheat to run around looking for combine harvesters and driers.

Farmers are, therefore, encouraged to go the traditional route of cutting the maize stalks and form “stakes”, so that the maize will continue to dry in those stakes.
Alternatively, farmers with safe and adequate storage can remove the maize cobs only and take them into storage sheds to continue drying.
That way, farmers would be able to move in and prepare the land and plant wheat before the planting window closes.

Government can also fix a few driers that require minimum repairs and ensure that a few farmers use them to dry their crops.

After the experience of the summer season, government had promised to avoid the same mistakes they made then and hence promised to avail inputs for the winter season on time.
However, to date very few inputs have been disbursed. It is, therefore, not clear to when these will be made available in adequate amounts as the planting period is fast closing.
Farmers require diesel to start land preparations and to be able to plant, but the fuel has been available in dribs and drabs.

Most farmers do not own seed drills and have to use vicons to apply the fertiliser and seed.
For a farmer to be able to plant wheat, he/she will need to disc the land twice, each operation requiring 15 to 20 litres of fuel per hectare.

The farmer will then need to vicon the fertiliser before light discing it to incorporate it into the soil and that operation will require another 20 to 25 litres per hectare.
The farmer will then need to come back and vicon the seed, before using a roller to roll the seed into the soil and that requires another 20 to 25 litres of fuel per hectare.
Therefore, a farmer will require about 70 to 80 litres of fuel per hectare to be able to plant a hectare of wheat.

In most cases, farmers need to apply herbicides immediately after planting and that will require another 10 to 15 litres of fuel per hectare.
The small amounts of diesel that farmers have been given to date makes it difficult for them to prepare their lands and plant on time.

The disbursement of seed and basal fertilisers has also been slow. Most farmers who intended to grow large hectarages have been limited to inputs for just 20 hectares.
One wonders when they will get the balance of the inputs when the window period is almost closing.
Government should ensure that farmers have received their full allocations of fuel and inputs without any further delays so that they can move in and prepare their lands and plant.
Farmers have a tendency to adjust their plans depending on the prevailing situation (kushanda nezviripo).

Most will establish areas that tally with the resources they have received so far and when the window closes, they will simply stop planting, thereby compromising the initial targeted hectarage.
This late disbursement of inputs is, therefore, likely to seriously compromise the area that will be planted to wheat this season.
The area planted to wheat over the past few years had declined to between 12 000 to 15 000 hectares per year as farmers faced a host of challenges.

Seed houses also reduced the seed they were producing for the country.
However, when government decided to set a target of 50 000 hectares, the planning authorities should have checked with seed houses, fertiliser and chemical manufacturing companies to see if the required inputs would be available in adequate amounts.

It would appear this was not done because not enough wheat seed is available and efforts to secure some were only made very late.  Having realised that there was a shortage of certified seed, government took the decision, obviously having consulted a few experts, to use retained seed from last season’s crop.
However, the way this was done leaves a lot to be desired.

While it is an acceptable practice for farmers to use a combination of retained seed and certified seed, farmers will always buy the same certified seed variety to mix with the retained seed.
This was, however, not the case here, because government simply took commercial wheat grain (where several varieties had already been mixed) and packed it as seed.

This is very dangerous because that seed contains both long and short season varieties.
Imagine a situation where a farmer had already stored grain from SC301 and SC727 in the same granary, comes back, and tries to use that grain as seed. The crop will have too many variations, in the end some plants will be two metres long (SC301), when other will be 3,2 metres long (SC727).
The plants will silk at different times and the pollination will be problematic. While it takes 57 days for the SC301 to silk, it will take 72 days for the SC727 to silk. It is unbelievable how SeedCo bought into such an idea and decided to go along with it.

Those who are distributing it now claim it is the “Seedco’s Nduna” variety and if this seed fails to perform, SeedCo’s reputation will suffer.
They should have referred government to another supplier for the balance of the 6 000 tonnes wheat seed being sought.

Planners should always plan and set targets of the activities they need to accomplish to achieve a certain task.
Government should also desist from buying seed from one company, there are now over 10 local companies that are producing maize seed and in the case of wheat, Pannar Seeds could have come in to provide the shortfall by importing seed from their sister companies in South Africa.

It was the most logical thing to do.
Looking ahead, government should also consider whether there would be enough seed for the next summer and winter programmes.

If not, then this is the time to think in terms of contracting farmers to grow wheat seed for next year or making arrangements to import the seed from neighbouring countries.
Most farmers use movable aluminium laterals to irrigate their lands, however, these aluminium pipes are subject to a lot of thefts as the aluminium is much sought after.
In some cases, farmers need to replace broken pipes, hydrants, hooks, electrical components on the pumping units and so on.

Government, through the department of irrigation promised farmers that they would assist them replace the stolen or broken pipes so that they can plant their desired hectarages.
However, one week into the planting period, these pipes have still not been provided, as there seems to be problems with Treasury effecting payments so that the pipes can be supplied.
Whereas in summer, farmers simply needed to plant and apply herbicides and wait for the heavens to open up, growing a winter crop is a completely different scenario. Farmers should be able to apply the water to the crop, failure to do so results in poor yield levels.
Government should, therefore, make sure that the promised pipes have been paid for and delivered as soon as possible.

Failure to do so spells disaster for a lot of farmers who were banking on those pipes to irrigate their wheat crop.
Failure to do so also means farmers will reduce the areas planted to wheat so that they only grow areas that tally with the pipes they currently have.
Last summer season, most farmers failed to collect and apply lime that had been made available because they were expected to go and collect it all the way from Rushinga after the contracted company failed to deliver it to the designated GMB depots on time.

The high fertiliser rates that are being applied by the contracted farmers actually lead to high acidity levels.

It is, therefore, essential that farmers apply lime to neutralise the resultant acidity.
However, now due to poor logistical arrangements, farmers have failed to collect and apply lime to their lands for the second consecutive season.

This has serious consequences for long-term effects in farmers achieving set targets.
Most farmers also do not have the money to pay transporters to transport the bulk inputs from GMB depots to their farms, as they are still to harvest and sell their summer crops.

This will inevitably delay operations as they struggle to find the money to pay the transporters.
Last summer, some farmers ended up giving up some of the fertiliser as payment to the transporters because they could not raise the money for transport. This will compromise the recommended fertiliser rates and have an effect on yield levels.

Government should have contracted transporters so that wheat inputs are moved from the suppliers straight to the farms.

Where a bag of basal fertiliser costs US$30, government should simply add the US$0,50 per bag transport charge so that the farmer pays US$30,50 per bag instead. This quickens the process of moving the inputs to the desired destinations.

It also removes the risk of farmers using part of the inputs to pay for the transportation of the inputs.
The summer Command Agriculture programme has proved that, if given the right support on time, farmers can rise to the challenge and produce on the farms as desired.
However, the planning and implementation of the current winter Command Agriculture programme leaves a lot to be desired.

The programme is littered with examples of poor planning and follow up implementation of decisions.
It is only two weeks to go before the wheat-planting window closes and government can still try to get a few things right, so that farmers can go ahead, plant wheat, and maybe still reach the desired 50 000-targeted hectares.

Peter Gambara is an agricultural consultant based in Harare