Zimbabwe: Military seed merchants
The distribution of agricultural inputs such as maize seed and fertilizer for the 2008/09 season has become the domain of Zimbabwe's military and President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
The new seed merchants. (Image: IRIN)
As the first rains fell in October, farmers flocked to traditional input retailers, only to be told that the government, through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, had bought all the seed from producers and had centralised the distribution of agricultural inputs.
"We received an instruction that the government had purchased all the seed and would be responsible for distribution to the farmers," an official who declined to be identified told IRIN.
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