DISASTER: FARMERS PRAY AS DROUGHT WITHERS THEIR CROP- Fred M’membe

DISASTER: FARMERS PRAY AS DROUGHT WITHERS THEIR CROP

It’s a disaster! Fields have dried up due to a drought that has destroyed a huge crop hectarage in most regions, and is threatening our country with unprecedented hunger.

Before the crisis, our country was already in distress caused by poor leadership and policy decisions, severe debt, decimated maize and financial reserves and an unstable currency that has triggered untold and unseen hardship for our people.

Sadly, even before our farmers could navigate this economic chaos and its attendant aftermath like exorbitant farming input prices, high electricity tariffs, and many more, the rains have failed us. The heavens have shut us out. And our crops are burning in the heat as if it’s in the dry season.

Our farmers have suffered a traumatic double blow from the drought, which is a natural cause to the economic crisis that is essentially a man- made calamity.

The farmers are stuck. They’re desperate. They’re miserable. They’re depressed. All they’re doing now is pray as drought withers their crops. Take, for instance, Zambia’s largest commercial farm area – the Mkushi farm block – it has been hit with unprecedented dryness.

The entire Mkushi farm block has been laid bare, and the losses are at an industrial scale like never seen before, with bankruptcy looming over the heads of defaulters, as banks prepare to safeguard their interests.

As you know, commercial farmers get loans with a repayment plan tailored primarily on two crops, and in the case of natural calamities, as is the case now, repayments become impossible. And so far, we are informed that there is an initial recall of loans for 11 commercial farmers.

We understand the banks have so soon sent out notices for the sale of the attached farms and assets by mortgage in possession. With the initial 11 affected farms believed to be valued at about US$15.6 million. What a terrible situation for the farmers and for the agricultural sector in the country?

However, the questions to ask are: if commercial farmers are this badly hit by this climate crisis or the drought itself, what are the peasant or small-scale farmers going through? How are they coping and mitigating the losses caused by this crisis? Who is even paying attention to their plight? What practical measures are in place to assist these most vulnerable citizens in this country?

Certainly, this situation will greatly impact the economy and, ultimately, the country’s food security. There is no doubt that a very unpleasant reality for the country and its citizens is ahead of us. Definitely, food will be scarce. This calls for sobriety, mature, and patriotic leadership.

It’s is also shocking to note that when politicians are busy talking about engaging commercial farmers to grow irrigated crops to mitigate the impact of the drought in the country, the country’s most productive and reliable farming block is choking on its debt, and going under the hammer in piecemeal. How will the government policy directive of growing more winter maize be realised when the commercial farmers have been left to suffocate? Who is following these events, and what are they doing to help both commercial and peasant farmers?

The situation we are faced with as a country today is not an easy one. It is a very difficult scenario, and we call upon the UPND administration to take a keen interest in what is happening in the agricultural sector and make practical interventions to help our farmers.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party