Zimbabwe cotton could quadruple by 2015
Zimbabwe could quadruple its cotton output to one million tonnes by 2015 if it starts to grow genetically modified crops and increases support to farmers, an official at agro-industrial firm Aico Africa Ltd said on Thursday 19 May, 2011.
Pat Devenish, chief executive of Aico Africa, a Zimbabwean producer of cotton lint and seed, said cotton production this year was expected to be 270,000 tonnes and Aico would buy 50% of the crop.
“If we start producing GMOs and the quality of inputs to farmers increases, there is nothing that will stop us from producing (one million tonnes),” Mr Devenish told Reuters at a foreign investor conference in Harare.
“That will be 4% of the world’s cotton output.”
He said the government had accepted in principle to allow the growing of GMO cotton. Small-scale farmers, who number about 100,000, produce the bulk of Zimbabwe’s cotton and Aico provides seed and fertilisers to most of them, who are contracted to sell their crop to the company.
Mr Devenish said Aico had secured $200 million from foreign banks to finance the purchase of cotton from farmers this year.
Aico, a majority shareholder in one of Africa’s largest maize seed producers, Seed Co Ltd, said it was poised to expand on the African continent where Seed Co already has a presence.
