Equipment breakdown hampers planting

Zimbabwe's chronic fuel shortages and a lack of spare parts for mechanised farming implements threatens the prospects for agricultural revival in the new planting season, analysts warn. According to the District Development Fund (DDF), which is charged with implementing a tillage programme among resettled subsistence farmers, only 12,000 hectares out of a targeted 100,000 hectares for both communal and commercial farmers has been tilled since the programme began officially last month. At the conclusion at the weekend of a nationwide tillage assessment tour by senior DDF officials, director-general James Jonga said that high operational costs and equipment shortages had undermined the tillage programme throughout the country. "More than 768 trucks and tractors are not functioning, and we have only 450 tractors running. This is caused by a shortage of spares and the shortage of diesel," Jonga told the Chronicle, the official daily newspaper published in Bulawayo. He could not specify the geographic distribution of the 450 operative tractors. He said the DDF would soon embark on a programme to service the tractors and equipment at all provincial workshops, following a Zim $500 million (US $625,000) grant allocated for the acquisition of spares to revitalise the fleet. But Jonga said the fleet rehabilitation programme was likely to suffer the effects of a shortage of mechanics in provincial workshops. Tractors from these provinces would be repaired in the capital. "We want to ferry most of the broken down tractors from understaffed [provincial] depots to our main depot in Harare, so that technical teams can work on them," said Jonga. The DDF fleet has been breaking down gradually over the past two years, but the situation worsened early this year when Tanaka Power, a Harare-based agricultural equipment and implements distributor, pulled out of a deal to service equipment after the DDF failed to pay off its growing debt. The shortage of foreign currency had left the DDF unable to procure spares from international markets, and some of the tractors had been dismantled to obtain spares for those still in working order. There has also been concern that the Reserve Bank will struggle to find the foreign currency equivalent of Zim $500 million to import parts. A critical fuel shortage is another hurdle for farmers. Commercial farmers are required to source their own supplies before the DDF tills their land, but fuel is scarce, reports say. The government this week increased the price of fuel in what it said was an effort to improve the ability of the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe to import supplies. Zimbabwe's 2003-2004 farming season has taken off to a stuttering start because of a shortage of seeds, fertilisers and other inputs. Despite repeated assurances, the government has reportedly not been able to get adequate supplies of any of the inputs since the first rains three weeks ago. The Famine Early Warning Network (FEWS NET) noted last week that "even if the rainfall situation turns out to be good", the critical shortage of inputs would seriously affect Zimbabwe’s 2003/04 agricultural season. Access to seed and fertiliser by smallholder farmers was being hampered not just by limited supplies, but also by the increased prices at which these commodities are trading. The past twelve months has seen the price of hybrid maize seed rise from Zim $192/kg (about US 2 cents) to Zim $1,428/kg (about US $1.80). Efforts on Monday to get a comment from Joseph Made, the minister of lands, agriculture and rural resettlement were unsuccessful.