The ManicaPost
Fadzai Vengesa Post Correspondent
FOR Honde Valley banana farmer, Bright Nezomba, leading is not by pointing and telling people some place to go but by going to that place and making a case about it.
Nezomba’s story starts with him producing bananas on his communal piece of land and selling them on the streets of Mutare and the local community before he realised that he could try something else – value addition and selling for a better price.
The Manica Post caught up with him at the ongoing Zimbabwe Agricultural Show in Harare where he revealed that his value addition project had already started to make positive ripples in the community after he employed six people that now can support their families from the earnings they are making there.
“I decided to diversify into value addition and abandon the normal thing of just selling the fruits unprocessed and for a little fee in a bid to maximise profits because I was not getting much from the bananas in their raw form.
“Selling bananas unprocessed was giving me a lot of challenges because at times the fruit would flood the market and as a perishable commodity I would end up selling them at give-away prices,” he said.
Nezomba also highlighted that through his value addition project, he had managed to penetrate better paying markets, as consumers were finding the processed product very exciting and were appreciating it adding that people visiting his stand at the show were showing great interest in his products and was hoping to get more clients.
He added that he was making flour using both peeled and unpeeled green bananas, banana trunks to make fibre and banana pills to produce cattle stock feed, something that he had picked on the internet and had improved his income despite the fact that he is affected by high costs of inputs.
Furthermore, Nezomba revealed that his major challenges included high costs of production that also covered the procurement of even the low capacity solar system, which he uses to dry his products
“High costs of inputs are affecting my business to the extent that I end up reducing the quantities. I also need to boost my solar system because the one that I am using does not have the capacity to dry bananas effectively and does not work well when humidity levels are high,” he added.
Nezomba is one person who has heeded Government’s call for farmers to value add their produce so that they boost their incomes, stimulate economic development,create employment as well as improve their livelihoods.
Experience has shown that selling agricultural commodities in their raw state has limited potential for producers to make rewarding incomes.
