Lack of adequate finance and technical machinery impede agriculture production

Murehwa smallholder farmers registered  the challenges they face in  beekeeping and organic agriculture through a stakeholder convention facilitated by Humanitarian Information Facilitation Centre (HIFC) and the Alternative Business Alliance (ABA) in ward 5, Zaranyika, Murehwa last week.

Owami Sithole Recently in Murehwa

Lack of adequate finance and technical machinery have become  major impediments to the development of the bee-keeping and organic agriculture industry for Murehwa ward 5 rural small holder farmers.

In an interview with 263chat, Washington Chishanuone,one of the beekeepers in Nyamande village  said  that the marginalization of the sector is a key issue that is slowing down its growth.

“The Bee Keeping Act is not helping bee-keepers in anyway especially small holder farmers , also on finance accessibility we don’t have collateral documents which can make us access bank loans , we don’t have machinery to use and lack of market linkage for our products ,” said Chishanu.

Another woman who is also into organic agriculture, Chipo Gota, of Sirewa village added that  market linkage and lack of transport to ferry produce to the markets  are some of the problems which derail their business.

“Our produce end up rotting  while in transit to Mbare musika compelling us to sale our produce at lower prices ,also people are shunning away from our local produce , they are preferring foreign produce from Zambia and South Africa, this has made us  to sale  the products at a giveaway price. At the end we don’t realize much profits and it demoralizes us to keep producing,” she said.

Advocacy and gender officer of Alternative Business Alliance, Value Dick said that their organization is prepared to assist people of Murehwa in capacity building, marketing, pricing, quality control and capital.

“We take a leading role in sustainable agricultural entrepreneurship development and capacity building as well as sustainable environment management mainly on improving the livelihoods of people living in the rural areas.

“We have identified various projects such as traditional poultry, bee keeping and organic agriculture through these self-help projects all these have the potential to employ thousands of jobless youths which can generate revenue to help grow the economy at large,” said Dick.

She added that their aim is to eradicate poverty and sustain the rural smallholder agriculture sector through community participatory development initiatives with environment protection as a key component.