Dep Minister Marapira on shortage of fertiliser

THE Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development responsible for cropping, Davis Marapira has attributed the shortage of Ammonium Nitrate (AN) fertiliser to liquidity challenges and the rejection of bond notes by private players in the fertiliser manufacturing and distribution industry.

In an interview, Deputy Minister Marapira said most fertiliser distributors were demanding hard currency and rejecting bond notes, a development which has seen most farmers failing to access Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser which is one of the most essential inputs in crop production.

He said if the situation remains the same, it was likely to affect Command Agriculture and subsequently affect efforts to attain optimum crop yield in the 2016/17 farming season.

“The country is facing shortage of top dressing fertiliser AN. The challenge that we are facing is that most fertiliser companies in the private sector are demanding hard currency and rejecting bond notes and plastic money. This has contributed immensely in the shortage of AN,” he said.

Deputy Minister Marapira, however, said the Government was working tirelessly to ensure that farmers access Ammonium Nitrate on time following incessant rains that the country received since the beginning of the year.

“We are complementing efforts with other ministries to ensure that we resolve the situation and make sure that there is adequate fertiliser on the market because we do not want this to affect command agriculture and our efforts to attain optimum crop yield in the 2016/17 farming season,” he said.

Most farmers countrywide are now in need of top dressing fertiliser as crops, especially maize plants, are now past the one knee height stage. The situation has been further compounded by the incessant rains that require farmers to add more nutrients to the soil.

is comes at a time when the country’s sole manufacturer of AN, Sable Chemical Industries is struggling to import the strategic raw material for the production of fertiliser. Sable Chemical Industries chief executive officer Mr Bothwell Nyajeka said his company was failing to import sufficient ammonia, a critical component in the manufacturing of AN fertiliser due to limited financial resources. The company requires 60 000 tonnes of ammonia annually and is operating at at 50 percent capacity due to the shortage of the component.

“We are producing 120 000 tonnes annually but we have the production capacity of 240 000 tonnes of AN annually.

“Our major challenge is capital. We abandoned the electrolysis method of producing AN because it was consuming a lot of energy and we are still weighing our options with one being the coalbed methane project. However, I cannot say much on the progress of the project,” said Mr Nyajeka.