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Pride Mahlangu, Business Reporter

AT least 13 000 smallholder farmers from Matabeleland region have received training on commercial production under the “Turning Matabeleland Green” initiative being spearheaded by Hamara Group.

Hamara head of marketing and public relations, Mr Clarence Mutangara, said their vision was to unlock the productive potential of communities especially small-scale farmers.

“Through ‘Turning Matabeleland Green’ we have been training farmers for many years and have had close to 13 000 small-scale farmers pass through us,” he said.

The training covered aspects such as linkages between small-scale farmers and corporate partners, harnessing support to farmers, provision of good quality inputs, technical support, training and accessing markets.

“We started the outgrowers programme as a way to support small-scale farmers. 

“A chicken outgrower programme has been going on for many years in Kezi where we have rural farmers growing chickens for us to slaughter and for live chicken markets,” said Mr Mutangara.

“That success with poultry has made us to start branching out into other value chains. For example, we now have small-scale farmers growing eggs for us and some growing tomatoes for us.”

The group said it was also training small-scale farmers to produce quality products so that they can compete in the world market through exports.

“We need to be competitive on the world market because we want to export. 

“We need to be able to produce the lowest cost items at the highest quality because that’s the world standards. 

“So, we try and train our farmers to farm at world-class standards at lowest cost by finding all the ways they can to reduce expenditure, which is a training thing,” said Mr Mutangara. — @pridesinstinctz