Zimbabwe coffee output down
Coffee production is on the decrease in the country, with farmers preferring high paying crops like macadamia.
The minister of lands, land reform and resettlement, Didymus Mutasa, made the revelation while briefing ambassadors accredited to Zimbabwe in Harare on Wednesday.
He said there were two reasons that affected the production of coffee in the country.
"When the price of coffee went down on the international market, the farmers reduced the coffee hectarage and instead planted macadamia.
The advantage for the farmers was that macadamia nuts fetched a higher profit margin than coffee and that macadamia is less labour intensive than coffee," Mutasa said.
He added some coffee growing companies were slowly reducing hectarage of the crop.
"One of the companies which used to produce coffee, Clearwaters, is on the programme of slowly reducing the hectarage of coffee and to date they have 27 hectares which will be reduced to 18 hectares soon.
Another company, Tanganda has also down sized its coffee plantation from 5 000 hectares to 3 000 hectares for the same reason," he added.
Mutasa said it made sense for farmers to reduce coffee and increase macadamia.
"Regarding the coffee plantations which were allocated to beneficiaries, the outgoing farmer sprayed the crop to facilitate early picking and vacation from the farm.
The next round of spraying by the new land beneficiary was not achieved in most cases because either the outgoing farmer delayed in moving out or the extension worker was slow in advising the new land beneficiary on the spraying programme.
Therefore these two scenarios contributed to the decline in coffee,"
Also addressing the same gathering, agriculture minister Joseph Made pledged government's intentions to resuscitate the production of coffee, tea and the beef industry.
"Our focus is on resuscitating plantation crops like coffee and tea.
Our tobacco quality is good and this is signified by its current price of US$3 per kg," said Made.
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