HARARE, 11 November 2009: – An acute shortage of labourers on Zimbabwe’s newly resettled farms, combined with the farmers’ inability to raise loans from financial institutions to purchase agricultural inputs, and money owed to them by the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), do not bode well for food insecurity.
-The majority of our members have indicated that their farming activities have been severely affected by the shortage of manpower to use on the farms. We are poorly prepared, and our hands as farmers are tied because we don’t have the money to keep the farm workers, said Denford Chimbwanda, president of the Grain and Cereal Producers Association (GCPA).
Renson Gasela, an agricultural analyst and the secretary for agriculture in the breakaway faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Arthur Mutambara, told IRIN that many farmers who had sold their previous harvest to the GMB – the sole grain purchaser in Zimbabwe – were still awaiting payment, further turning the screws on their cash flow.
-Farm workers are deciding that enough is enough. I am aware that some farmers have managed to keep some of their workers, on the promise that once they get paid by the GMB they will settle the wage arrears, but these promises have gone for too long, forcing them [workers] to look for other sources of income, he said.
In the first quarter of 2009 nearly seven million Zimbabweans depended on food aid, but a relatively successful harvest of 1,14 million metric tons of maize, the staple food, in June 2009 – a two-fold increase on the previous year – brought optimism that the country was turning the corner on its food insecurity.
