No shortages of wheat despite farm occupations

The Zimbabwe government on Thursday denied any shortages of wheat, despite white commercial farmers projecting a 50 percent drop in grain production, AFP reported. The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) was quoted in the independent ‘Financial Gazette’ on Thursday as saying that Zimbabwe faced a 50 percent reduction in wheat output due to disruptions arising from land seizures by supporters of President Robert Mugabe. Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement Minister Joseph Made denied the possibility of shortages, and accused the CFU of trying to earn political mileage through alarmist statements. “I want to categorically state that, that is not a fact,” Made told a news conference. “Again the Commercial Farmers Union continues to bring in information that is meant to be despondent in nature, to be a threat to our people by indicating that the wheat crop production will be down 50 percent,” he said. Zimbabwe’s domestic annual wheat requirements are about 400,000 mt. “We are going to have a shortfall of 200,000 mt of wheat this season unless there is a positive statement from the government assuring farmers about the security of their investment on the crop,” CFU deputy director Jerry Grant told the ‘Financial Gazette’. Made said the government had budgeted US $9 million to be loaned to resettled farmers and black commercial farmers to boost the winter wheat production. “We will make sure that every piece of land that should be under wheat ... we have to put in wheat,” he said, adding: “we have to mobilise the resources for doing that (because) the issue now has become a strategic issue, where we cannot continue being threatened by the CFU.” “We have government resources, we are putting them in place in order to produce wheat,” he said. “This continued behaviour by a union that represents farmers, again taking a position that is political, that is really to put fear in our people ... has got to come to an end,” Made said. Made said his ministry would seek US $272 million for inputs to be used by more than 1.4 million black farmers - including 1.2 million communal farmers, 221,000 resettled farmers and some 30,000 small-scale commercial farmers. Those resources would be for the next agricultural season, which starts in August and covers most of the staple and commercial crops as well as livestock production. “I hope this time we will not have the commercial farmers standing in our way,” he said. Zimbabwe, under its controversial land reform scheme, plans to take some five million hectares of white-owned farmland. Made said the gazetted properties so far stood close to 6.5 million hectares. “So we are confident that we are going to get that land way before the season starts,” he said. Some 4,500 white farmers own some 30 percent of the country’s land and about 70 percent of the total prime farmland in a country of 12 million people.