Eng Raymond Nazare

WE continue to advocate a comprehensive technical support programme to improve productivity per unit area of land under agricultural production.
We believe all the various actors on the agricultural production platform must in the end contribute to productive and profitable enterprises.
As the pivot of the whole agricultural system, the farmer is the most critical element deserving the greatest support, much of which is technical.
Now we revisit the issue of provision of technical support for farmers.
In the last episode, we looked at the farmer as a businessperson needing to run a financial ship.
This time we will go on the ground to identify examples of the kind of ‘scientific’ information that farmers need to be taught in order to improve their production capacity and the mechanical dimension where they need machines to expedite operations.
Technical information is basically the ‘how to do it’.
The information will look ordinary and simple, but farmers and their personnel need to understand its full implications in order to maximise production at farm level.
Technical experts and extension staff must provide the information.
Information sheets, brochures, books and manuals and even mobile ICT platforms can be the vehicles for transmitting the technical information to farmers. Some of these platforms can be interactive.
What do farmers need to know in order to succeed?
They need a lot of things, but here is a small sample for illustrative purposes only.
We start by looking at land preparation; a farming practice that affects infiltration of rain water and root penetration into the soil.
Bare soils with little or no mulch promote run-off and limited infiltration; if a ripper has been used, infiltration is maximised resulting in good germination.
Plant population affects overall yield of a given crop.
It must be optimised through appropriate spacing both within and between rows.
Planting depth will affect germination; if shallow and the soil moisture is limited, poor germination results in a poor stand and low yields.
Fertiliser quantity, quality and amount as well as placement method all affect crop growth and the ultimate yield. Spreading a small amount of fertiliser over a large area is a waste as yields will not increase; the trick is to apply it on a smaller area where high yields can be realised.
Farmers need to know their fertilisers and their characteristics.
Basal fertilisers need to be incorporated. Although urea and ammonium nitrate are both white granular top-dressing fertilisers, their chemistry and therefore behaviour in the soil, is very different.
If left exposed to the air, urea will convert to ammonia, a gas that escapes into the atmosphere resulting in serious nitrogen losses.
Urea must be dug into the soil.
Alternatively, a light irrigation will dissolve the urea which then sinks into the soil from where it cannot escape as a gas.
Seed should not come into intimate contact with fertiliser because a ‘salt’ effect may prevent the seed from imbibing enough water to germinate.
When hand-planting in holes, after placing fertiliser in the hole, it must be covered with a little soil before dropping in the seed, covering with soil and pressing down firmly to ensure close contact between moist soil and seed.
If the moist soil is not pressed down but left loose, moisture is rapidly lost; the seed will not germinate until the next rainfall event which might be a long way coming in a not-so-wet year.
A poor crop stand will result.
The soil added to the planting hole separates seed from the ‘salty’ fertiliser.
In a wet year, moisture is not limiting, so germination is likely to occur anyway.
But in dry years, germination may fail even where just enough moisture is available.
All these are technical details that farmers should find it easy to understand.
Our experience is that many do not have a full appreciation of these scientific finer points and so obtain poor maize yields.
Technical support services must be constantly availed to farmers for optimum production.
Manure management is another challenge requiring technical expertise, especially for smallholder farmers who use it to supplement their limited fertiliser stocks.
If manure is heaped in small mounds and left in the fields throughout the dry hot months, all the nitrogen nutrients will be lost through volatilisation.
Proper manure management requires that the manure be dug up and placed in one large heap preferably covered with some form of mulch such as dry grass to allow it to mature.
This should be done in October.
The manure is then carted to the field where it can be dribbled into the planting furrows with the seeds and covered or spread out in the fields and immediately ploughed under.
Manure incorporation reduces losses of valuable nitrogen.
Farmers must fully appreciate that weeds, pests and diseases reduce crop yields.
Their control also require that farmers have adequate knowledge so that yields are not compromised.
Can farmers identify the signs and symptoms of common diseases in their crops or livestock?
Can they identify insect pests?
Do they know the threshold levels above which they must take action to control a given pest?
Answers to these constitute the technical information that farmers need.
My personal experience with sugar beans is informative. Using funds borrowed from a bank, we put up a beautiful crop.
As the pods were beginning to fill, we noted some yellowing of plant parts but did not think much about it given our limited experience with this crop.
Within a short time, both leaves and pods took on a rusty colour.
The leaves dried out before the beans were fully matured.
The beans were discoloured and could not be marketed.
We had been hit by bean rust disease sneaking in through our knowledge gap!
So it became a challenge to service the bank loan.
Another area where farmers desperately need technical support and training is in the operation of mechanical equipment.
Westerners refer to Africa as an equipment graveyard due to the low level of technical expertise which results in thousands of equipment being abandoned when still relatively new.
The knowledge, skills and experience to operate, repair and maintain mechanical equipment are severely limited.
African governments, including Zimbabwe, need a paradigm shift to embrace mechanisation and invest in the training of technically competent manpower.
We already have a Ministry department dedicated to agricultural mechanisation.
We need to focus on local initiatives to develop home-grown mechanisation programmes to minimise on importation and to cater for small to medium scale farm enterprises.
Even large pieces of equipment can be locally assembled and in time, locally manufactured.
We need a paradigm shift from importation to local content.
That is how China, India, Korea and Japan developed their now advanced mechanisation systems dedicated to even smallholder farmers.
In Zimbabwe, there are severe shortages of mechanisation skills at most of the resettled farms in basic areas like operating a tractor to plough, disc, rip, plant and apply pesticides and fertilisers.
These skills deficiencies contribute to the huge productivity gap reflected by low per hectare crop yields.
Both the resettled farmers and their workers lack skills, knowledge and experience in many operations associated with production of various crops.
Of course tractors are expensive and not affordable to most farmers.
For thousands of smallholder communal and A1 farmers, who are the majority in both numbers and area cropped, appropriate mechanisation units are largely unavailable.
Small-scale motorised planters, fertiliser spreaders and herbicide appliances are required to allow for scaling up of production of various commodities.
Most importantly, adequate training in the operation and maintenance of such agricultural mechanisation equipment is critical.
The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) has developed and successfully tested several models of two-wheel tractors and planters.
With support from Government and the private sector, the UZ initiative promises to boost agricultural productivity across the whole country.
In this episode we have tried to indicate the type of information that constitutes technical support for farmers while also calling for the mobilisation and capacitation of extension departments and institutions of higher learning in the provision of such support to underpin expanded agricultural production initiatives such as Command Agriculture under Zim-ASSET.