Cotton beneficiation the way to go

Lazarus Sauti

Tichakunda Muzire, a cotton farmer for many years in Gokwe south district in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe, is fast losing his interest in cotton growing due to poor pricing and alleged manipulation by buyers.

“My brother, for so many years I survived growing cotton, but it is useless to continue when buyers are ripping us off.

“The price of cotton no longer motivates us. In fact, I am opting for more lucrative crops such as tobacco,” he says.

Muzire adds: “Imagine we are even forced to sell cotton by-products, which we should retain. Is this fair?”

Another cotton farmer from the hot and semi-arid marginalised area, Grace Ndongwe, says the crop, once referred to as Zimbabwe’s white gold, has suffered from low intake as ginners as well as textile companies are facing increasing pressure from cheap imported fabrics and clothes mainly from China.

“Cotton used to be a lucrative cash crop, but we are now forced to sell it for 30c/kg.

“To make matters worse, buyers always complain about money issues. They are also blaming cheap imported fabrics from China for low prices.

“This forced me and other farmers in the area to grow maize to enhance our household food security,” she said, swearing that she will never grow cotton again.

To solve the problems faced by cotton farmers in the country, Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, Joseph Made, says there is need to restore the textile sector in the country, revive the Cotton Marketing Company as well as to invest in cotton beneficiation to increase earnings from the crop as well as promote its production by farmers.

“We should focus on beneficiation so that we use our cotton in making a lot of things. The country stands to gain more through exporting processed products such as clothes and blankets than raw cotton.

“That is what our government desires to realise and that is what our President (Robert Mugabe) is encouraging us to do – to focus on beneficiation of raw materials,” Made noted.

Speaking at the Extraordinary Summit of Sadc Heads of State and Government convened to adopt a Regional Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap and the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan in Harare in April, Sadc Chairperson, President Robert Mugabe said it is only through adding value “to our products that we can make the first step to industrialisation.”

“Value addition and beneficiation will lead to increased returns from the export of our tobacco, cocoa, coffee, cotton, wood and sugar.

“If we continue as exporters of raw materials, we are sure to remain trapped in the jaws of underdevelopment, while those who add value on our behalf flourish at our expense,” he said.

Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) Executive Director, Paul Zakariya, concurs: “There is need to urgently put in place value addition structures in the cotton chain as cotton lint prices are projected to continue falling.”

Derek Beauchamp, Chief Executive Officer of Tanzi Zimbabwe, a company that specialises in netting, twine, candle wick, string, yarn and ropes, also supports cotton beneficiation as the panacea to problems affecting cotton farmers.

“We need to maintain our quality of product against cheap products; therefore, we support the cotton beneficiation value chain,” said Beauchamp.

On the revival of the textile sector, Minister Made notes: “Cotton is a vital crop, and to benefit from it, we must beneficiate and this starts with resuscitating the textile industry so that our produce is not sold out in raw form, but is processed locally.”

His idea was supported by Industry and Commerce Minister Mike Bimha who recently called on local industries to import raw materials than importing finished products to keep local industries running.

“Local industries must determine what to import and what we manufacture to determine the gap between local manufactured products and imports to promote our local brands,” he said.

In a presentation paper titled “Value Addition in Raw Material and Agricultural Exports from Zimbabwe”, Deputy minister of Industry and Commerce, Chiratidzo Iris Mabuwa says the significance of adding value to cotton products takes in the emergency of vertical and horizontally integrated agro-based industries – a strategy for luring both local and foreign direct investment – increased capacity utilisation by firms, as well as employment creation.

Mabuwa, thus, urges the government to partner cotton companies, small-holder farmers, local seed producers, oil expressers, ginners, spinners as well as foreign companies in the beneficiation of cotton to promote higher producer prices for farmers.

She also believes cotton beneficiation can transform Zimbabwe as the country is among the world’s top cotton producing nations despite the dwindling land area put under the crop in recent years due to falling prices and other reasons.

A report released in February this year by Index Mundi, a data portal that gathers facts and statistics from multiple sources and turns them into easy to use visuals, ranked Zimbabwe on number nine among cotton producing countries on the continent.

On a scale of 192 top cotton producing companies worldwide, the country was ranked number 27 and produced 112 554 metric tonnes of lint (processed cotton) in 2014.

Last week, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa gave a glimmer of hope to the revival of the Zimbabwean textile industry when he announced a ban on the importation of second hand clothes in his mid-term fiscal policy review.