When media sets agenda for bread, butter issues …

THIS past week, Zimbabwe Newspapers Limited (1980) hosted a one-day smallholder horticulture farmers’ conference in Mutoko. The brainchild of the Zimpapers Group’s flagship daily newspaper, The Herald’s Agriculture desk working closely with the public relations department, the conference was borne out of the need to create a platform for smallholder horticulture farmers to come face-to-face with their various service providers and interact with a view to improve their operations.

Their operations have for a very long time been hamstrung by a myriad of problems that have restricted them from exploring their full potential and get optimal rewards for their toil.

This has only allowed them to live each day, as it comes and not plan beyond the present given that their earnings have not been growing, thanks to the depressing atmosphere under which they operate.

Among the plethora of challenges these farmers face in their line of duty is limited access to vital resources such as land and capital, unreliable markets, climate change impacts, lack of technical information and inadequate infrastructure for the safe handling of their produce.

These challenges often hinder their efforts to make their operations profitable leaving them unable to expand their scales of business.

The conference therefore, was an opportunity for farmers to share experiences and get answers for questions that have for years been gnawing at the core of their existence.

And indeed, they came out in their numbers. From an initial target of 220 participants, of which at least 100 were expected to be farmers with the mix of service providers making up the outstanding 120, the number easily ballooned to figures in excess of 500.

Suffice it to say therefore that the bulk of those people who later trooped into the venue, most of whom were not formally invited, were farmers while numbers of service providers and other stakeholders that included Government ministries, departments and private sector representatives did not change much.

This group of attendees probably failed to break the 120 target that was arrived at following an audit of organisations that had confirmed their intentions to participate.

In essence, it was a farmers’ event for real. And the facts on the ground told the story.

The farmers’ coming out in their numbers only confirmed one thing – their huge appetite for knowledge on the various production processes they deal with on a daily basis since most of them sell their produce to mass markets like Mbare, Chikwanha and Lusaka to name just a few.

These farmers have since time immemorial been subject to a lot of harrowing experiences each time they market their produce with the majority of them literally failing to make ends meet.

Farmers endure many challenges most of which would easily hound the fainthearted individuals out of business but they have soldiered on.

It was out of this observation that The Herald made the decision to initiate a process whose fruits may not show now but sometime in the future if the deliberations from the conference are taken seriously and actualised.

If adopted, recommendations and proposals from the conference can easily set the stage for farmers’ transition from just being vegetable producers to business people who have organised markets both locally and outside the borders.

This would easily feed into the global push to end poverty, food insecurity and create economically sound and secure individuals.

Here at home, farmers can easily stroll into the national vision of achieving an upper middle income economy in which citizens will be both food secure and economically empowered.

At the moment, these farmers’ biggest undoing is the lack of information on markets, restricted access to critical technical information they need for effective production of crops.

They also struggle to access modern agricultural technologies, inputs, and innovative practices while limited knowledge and resources restrict their ability to adopt sustainable farming methods, improve productivity, and adapt to climate change.

Little knowledge on sustainable production methods has clearly been sticking out like a sore thumb for most of the farmers, as most of them confessed to having not at any point heard anything on how good agronomic practices come into play at the marketing of produce.

It was one fact that farmers confirmed was making it difficult for them even to deal with big supermarkets like OK, Pick and Pay and many others.

One issue which supermarkets usually do not pay on the spot but pay after some time, most probably two weeks or even more later.

Such a scenario obviously demonstrated the lack of information and guidance on how market demands should shape farmers’ production habits in terms of time to produce and the quantities.

Some of them just produce because a neighbour is doing so, which makes it difficult for their products to command attention at the market as they tend to sell it at the same time. This also exposed shortcomings on the part of some service providers who should be a disconnect between farmers and service providers who are expected to advise them on what to produce, at what time and where to market it.

Obviously, with the right guidance, farmers can go places and conquer. They only need the right advice and the right environment to operate in, and they can produce effectively even to the point of participating in the production of elitist products like flowers.

This will allow them to participate actively in building the economy given that such products usually fetch good money on the export markets.

It is disappointing to note that flowers that were sold during 2023’s Valentine Day’s commemorations were reportedly imported from Kenya yet these same farmers who came for the conference can also produce them with the right support in terms of information and other vital resources.

Such is the situation with our smallholder horticulture farmers that The Herald found it prudent to host the event, which is also set to extend to other provinces across the country until it gets to the national level. And justifiably so, The Herald, is actualising the power of the media to champion development other than just educating, informing and entertaining, as is usually the case with most media functions.