The Grain Marketing Board depot in Chitungwiza is allegedly selling fertilizer with stones in it.

“I bought this from GMB some time ago in anticipation of the farming season being good and I have more than 100kg with me. Here I have 50kg but some of it is at the field I was given by government,” said the lady who belongs to the war veterans association. However she could not reveal to The Zimbabwe Gazette why she did not report the matter to the officials at the GMB depot. The fertilizer which is known as D here was mixed with small stones. It is not yet known if this is the case with all bags of fertiliser located at this depot which is located in the small Chitungwiza Industrial area. Again whether it is human error or a deliberate action by whoever packed the fertilizer for GMB we could not establish.

{mopsgoogle right} Efforts to get a comment from officials’ there were futile as they are ignorant to alternative media. The lady in the situation above whom we also have her name but won’t publish it for professional reasons said she will just continue using the fertiliser as it is. The source of the fertilizer could not also be established but Zimbabwe has been having problems of getting the wrong farming inputs in the last few farming seasons. Last year there was talk of the wrong type of fertilizer coming from South Africa and it made headlines. This fertilizer which is of the same group with the one mentioned earlier had to be banned from the Zimbabwean market as the government tried to bring the correct fertilizer.

GMB is wholly government owned and it sells farming inputs as well as grains to the public at subsidized rates. It is also the sole buyer of grains in Zimbabwe and by it being affordable in pricing of inputs they hold, most people with links to the government get to have them. Some get them for free and some at not at market rate prices which tempts them to go and sell on the black market rather than farm. The company has also at many times suffered from farmers refusing to sell their produce to it as their buying rates are deemed low and controlled by the state. Last year farmers in Mashonaland Central which is a strong commercial farming region refused to cultivate maize only unless if the government through GMB had given them favourable rates. They said they were going to stick to Soya bean farming which gave them more money from other markets. Mashonaland Central governor Ephraim Sango Masawi who happens to be a farmer there as well vowed that they would not have maize in their fields until government gave them better rates.

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