Helplessly watching her maize turn yellow as she waited for free fertilizer from the government, Zimbabwean farmer Marian Kanenungo had nothing but makeshift compost from an anthill to help save her crop — and she had low hopes of that.
Kanenungo, a smallholder farmer in Mudzi, 230km northwest of the capital, Harare, is one of many who struggled to buy fertilizer during the 2022-2023 planting season after prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“If I buy fertilizer, it means my grandchildren will not go to school. I had to use anthill soil and compost as manure, but, as you know, that will not yield much,” the 50-year-old Kanenungo said.
Photo: Reuters
Sanctions on entities within major fertilizer exporter Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and a jump in the price of gas, key in the manufacture of nitrogen products, have pushed up prices of crop nutrients globally in the past year.
Fertilizer prices in Zimbabwe have risen by nearly 30 percent in that period, with a 50kg bag of basal fertilizer costing an average US$45 and a bag of top dressing fertilizer about US$60, Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union operations director Prince Kuipa said.
The union, which represents most of the country’s farmers, said that high fertilizer prices could affect crop output despite favorable rains in the maize-growing region.
“The number of [fertilizer] bags that farmers can buy has been badly affected,” Kuipa said.
The Zimbabwean government has a long-running input support scheme to help with costs like fertilizer. It increased the number of smallholder farmers covered by the scheme by 25 percent to 2.89 million during the 2022-2023 season, hoping to help more households cope with rising food inflation.
However, with global prices high, it has struggled to provide fertilizer to farmers, leaving many smallholders facing a poor harvest.
These include Emilia David, a 27-year-old mother of three.
“To save my crops, I had to apply decomposing tree leaves. I know this is old fashioned, but there is nothing I can do. My children need to eat,” she said.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has named Zimbabwe, Malawi and Angola as countries in the southern African region facing food insecurity due to reduced fertilizer use.
In Malawi, maize output is expected to fall 4 percent this year, after the government’s “affordable inputs program” struggled to keep up with price increases, Malawian Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale said.
Fertilizer prices in Malawi have more than doubled in the past year, with a 50kg bag retailing at 75,000 Malawian kwacha (US$73.08), putting pressure on the government’s 109 billion kwacha budget for the input support program.
“The cost of the program almost tripled,” Kawale said, while receiving a 20,000 tonne consignment of fertilizer donated by Russia’s Uralchem-Uralkali on March 6.
Malawi was one of the first African countries to receive the donated fertilizer through the World Food Programme, part of 260,000 tonnes of the Russian firm’s fertilizer stuck in several European ports.
For Zione Maulidi, a 45-year-old Malawian smallholder farmer who received some of the donated Russian fertilizer, help came too late.
“This fertilizer we have received will not help us,” Maulidi said, surveying her stunted crop. “The period for applying it is over and the maize crop has failed.”
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