Agritex, Prime Seedco in joint cabbage production venture
THE Department of Agricultural Technical and Extension Services in conjunction with one of the country’s leading seed houses, Prime Seedco conducted a cabbage production workshop in Matabeleland North Province last week which was aimed at imparting to farmers the requisite knowledge on how to improve and realise meaningful returns from the horticultural crop.
The workshop, which was held at Umguza Lot farms drew farmers from various districts in Matabeleland North.
It was held at a time when most farmers in the province’s prime farming area of Umguza District had quit growing cabbages following massive losses in 2014.
Most of the farmers that cropped cabbages two years ago, lost the bulk of their produce to rotting due to low market demand and irrigation challenges.
“As we look forward to the summer cropping season, we want to capacitate farmers to guard against losses as well as enable them to control pests and diseases that attack cabbages. This workshop will also go a long way towards ensuring efficiency and increasing profitability. We also have Prime Seedco that came to market its various seed varieties that best suit this area in terms of adaptability and yields,” said Umguza District’s Ward Eight Agritex extension officer Mr Modecai Ndlovu.
He said Agritex was also working towards ensuring that farmers added value to their produce so as to realise optimum value from it.
“Of course we also invited another organisation, Turning Matabeleland Green, which came to assist farmers on accessing viable markets. Our aim is to build up from this and encourage value-addition and promote production of dried vegetables,” said Mr Ndlovu.
Prime Seedco Matabeleland regional sales agronomist Miss Faith Dube said the company’s priority was not merely to market its seed but to impart to farmers the necessary skills to realise profit from their agricultural enterprise.
“The main purpose behind this workshop was to train farmers because as Prime Seedco our initiative is not only to sell seed but to provide training because we thrive when farmers thrive. So we have noticed that the reason why farmers don’t thrive is that they do not achieve margins that are required and for them to achieve the margins, they have to farm with the correct practices. That’s why we are here and today the mandate was to train the farmers specifically on cabbage production from variety selection throughout to market,” she said.
Miss Dube encouraged farmers to crop short season maturing varieties as these enable them to realise better returns in a short space of time.
“I would encourage farmers to plant varieties that are short season that take shorter days to mature. We usually talk about those varieties when we talk about maize but we don’t stress the point when we talk about high value or horticulture varieties. If you look at the past season a lot of farmers had boreholes drying out, a lot of resources are becoming minimum.
“So the shorter days of maturity you have when planting your crop, you have many cycles of that crop per year thus you get profitability using less resources to produce that same variety in a shorter space of time and at Prime Seedco we encourage our farmers to plant Fabiola which is a five kg (kilogramme) cabbage, which has a very good shelf life and it only take 65 days to mature,” she said.
Mr Dumisani Ncube of Freeway Farm at Umguza Farming Lots, said the workshop was an eye opener to farmers further hinting that Prime Seedco should ensure adequate availability of seed within farmers’ proximity.
“The workshop was very educative and we are glad that we had a seed house gracing the event and we hope their presence means their seed varieties will always be available. If we continue to have workshops of this nature regularly I am sure we will certainly improve in terms of production,” he said.
Another farmer, Mrs Beauty Chidhakwa added that farmers needed to use the knowledge acquired to improve productivity.
“Above all the workshop encouraged us to be productive and I am encouraging farmers to come in numbers for these workshops because they are very useful,” said Mrs Chidhakwa.