ZMX mulls admitting horticultural products

THE Zimbabwe Mercantile Exchange (ZMX) will add horticultural produce to the list of commodities traded on the agricultural produce-focused exchange once the key supporting infrastructure has been put in place.

This comes as, in the horticultural and fresh produce industry, post-harvest losses have been happening for a long while, highlighting the urgent need to come up with measures to ensure that farmers do not continue to lose their perishable produce. The addition of horticultural produce on the ZMX trading platform (when the requisite infrastructure is set up) would be beneficial to farmers and a critical move considering the growing number of small-scale horticulture producers around the country

ZMX infrastructure is currently suitable for the trading of 49 agricultural commodities, including barley, coffee, groundnuts, macadamia nuts, millet, oats, pecan nuts, rapoko, rice, sorghum, sugar beans, tea, cowpeas, and round nuts.

The exchange’s core mandate includes the provision of an open market for agriculture commodities, with willing buyers and willing sellers participating in the market-led price discovery process.

It also ensures timeous settlement of transactions on a willing buyer, willing seller basis with both parties agreeing on the price.

ZMX general manager Mr Garikayi Munema told the recently held Agri-business Forum, organised by leading news publication Business Weekly, that post-harvest losses are more on the horticulture front and ZMX would ensure that the horticultural is onboarded on the ZMX trading catalog once the infrastructure is put in place.

He indicated that work was already underway to look at how the exchange would collaborate with existing service providers in the cold chain industry.

“Post-harvest losses are more in horticulture than you find in grains and oil seeds, you find that grains can be there for 4 – 5 months but for tomatoes, it is a matter of days.

“As of now our operations are currently restricted to grains and oil seeds but our next step is to introduce livestock and horticulture.

“The reason why we have not yet started on horticulture trading is because it requires cold chain facilities, and until we have infrastructure that supports the trading of those commodities, we will defer a bit,”

“We also need to put in place a framework that governs the trading of horticulture products, we jumped to grain and oil seeds because there was already existence of infrastructure in terms of warehouses that were already there to support trading of grains and oilseeds,” said Mr Munema.

Mr Munema said ZMX had not yet come up with an integrated framework and infrastructure to support the trading of horticultural products, which has consequently led to the deferment of its introduction of the platform.

Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) board chairman and Agriseeds marketing director Ivan Craig said food processors and other agriculture produce off-takers should find a way to preserve and lock the value of farm produce like horticultural products.

According to Mr Munema, this is critical considering the growing number of small-scale horticulture produce farmers from areas like Murewa Domboshava, Hwedza and Seke.

“In terms of grains farmers are secure but it’s different when it comes to fresh produce, go to Mbare there are heaps mountains of tomatoes, rape, cabbage, spinach, beetroot you name it, and that is farmers’ loss.

“The issue of food loss, as much as we have food processors; go to Mbare Musika to see how much food we are losing, does ZMX have the facility to take or receipt fresh produce,” said Mr Craig.

The Business Weekly arranged forum, which ran under the theme, “Collaboration for a Sustainable Future: Agriculture and Business Working Together” sought to foment synergies between the agriculture sector’s primary producers and manufac-herald