Farmers, ginners fail to agree on 2014 cotton price

CottonFarmers and ginners have failed to agree on the cotton producer price as ginners are refusing to negotiate citing the order issued by the Competition and Tariffs Commission (CTC).
The CTC order stipulates that members of Cotton Ginners Association (CGA) forthwith cease and desist from engaging in restrictive practice of setting uniform prices for seed cotton bought from farmers and individually negotiate them with their contracted farmers.  Farmer organisations’ leaders are seeking to have the sections of this order amended to enable negotiations on behalf of farmers since it was established that the farmers were vulnerable and may not have the capacity to negotiate for higher prices.

Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU) president Wonder Chabikwa said farmers were expecting a minimum price of 60 cents.
“When negotiating for a producer price, we take into account the farmers’ production costs. It costs 53c to produce a kilogramme of seed cotton so we do not expect a low price for us to break even.We hope our engagement with the commission will allow us to negotiate. We can only come up with a price after negotiations,” he said.

Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) vice president Berean Mukwende said farmers had started picking cotton and were eagerly awaiting a viable price.
“Farmers should get fair prices that will enable them to go back to the fields and ginners should not take advantage of farmers,” he said.

The CTC order came as a result of complaints raised in 2010 after farmers unions alleged that CGA was engaging in restrictive and unfair business practices through collusive arrangements and agreements in their dealings with the farmers.

This resulted in ginners operating like a monopoly and farmers alleged that the CGA offered farmers inflated inputs prices which negatively affected the farmers and that CGA was buying seed cotton from the farmers at the same price throughout the country, thus leaving the farmer with no choice.

The Agricultural Marketing Authority has set cotton common buying points so that any negotiations should happen at a designated buying point to curb side marketing.

AMA urged ginners to buy from their contracted farmers only and in terms of the quota allocated to them. -BH24.

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