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Meteorologists predict that farmers in Zimbabwe are preparing to plant in the fields and that the country is experiencing a new season of dry growth. But that did not convince Sikhathele Sibanda to cultivate anything other than thirsty corn, despite government pressure.
Drought-resistant cereals such as sorghum are "unprofitable" and hard-working, he complains, aged 56, who farms two hectares of land in Ezimnyama, a village near the border with Botswana.
Red-billed cougars like to eat small grains of sorghum, forcing farmers to spend time watching over their fields, she said.
And when she goes to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city, to sell her crop, she can not find a buyer for sorghum.
"People prefer corn," she said. "After the harvest in March of this year, I sold 15 buckets of corn in Bulawayo, but I did not manage to sell a bucket of sorghum."
With maize, the staple food of the region, the only buyers of alternatives are a minority of health-conscious consumers, she said.
While climate change is leading to more frequent and harder droughts, maize is becoming harder to grow in many parts of Zimbabwe – but it's still what people want to eat and a lot of people do. farmers want to plant, which makes it a big challenge.
The government of Zimbabwe is trying, however. This year, its Grain Marketing Board (GMB) announced that it would buy from farmers at the same price as maize "small grains" such as sorghum or millet – or leave farmers who grow small cereals exchange them for an equivalent amount of maize. House.
"You can sell any amount of small grains, such as rapoko, millet, sorghum, GMB at the same price as corn," said Marshall Perrance Shiri, Zimbabwean Minister of Lands, Agriculture , Water, Climate and Resettlement, in an interview. with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
These cereals grow much better in areas that are particularly prone to drought, and their planting would enhance the country's food security, he said.
But farmers have hesitated to change hands, he said, fearing that they will have to eat sorghum and other small grains they grow, and they prefer not to do so.
"So farmers are still trying to grow corn, although in most cases the success rate has been very low," he said.
Rethinking the system
Zimbabwe's transition to more drought-resistant commodities will require a major rethinking of the country's systems, from seed sales to grain purchasing systems, officials said.
Winston Babbage, vice president of commodities for the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union, said big farmers in the country, for example, who have better access to irrigation, might be able to grow enough corn to support the grain marketing board's offer to small farmers to exchange their sorghum crops for maize.
Irregular rainfall has forced the Zimbabwean government to import maize from Malawi, South Africa and Zambia in previous years of drought – although drought in the region has also affected production.
Babbage said his farmer union was working with meteorological officials, the Department of Local Government and the AGRITEX Agriculture Support Organization to find ways to reduce the risk of drought and to encourage small farmers to change their minds to sow small grains.
Part of the battle, he said, was simply to make sure that replacement grain seeds were available everywhere.
Seed companies "need to have adequate small grain seeds in drought-prone areas, so farmers have no excuse for not planting small grains," he said.
Shiri, the Minister of Agriculture, said that farmers who opt for the cultivation and consumption of corn substitutes could have beneficial effects on health – and that these cereals were, up to recently, staple foods in Zimbabwe.
"In the old days, we grew up eating rapoko and sorghum," he said.
Joseph Katete, a spokesman for the Grain Marketing Commission, said the offer to farmers to exchange small harvested cereals for corn would not have a serious impact on the Commission's bottom line, even if small grains were harder to sell.
"GMB has a small grain processing plant to produce whole meal and cooking flour for those who need it, especially for health reasons in Zimbabwe. We can process sorghum, millet and rapoko into three brands of refined cakes, "he said.
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