Zambia’s Sunflower production increased by a staggering 47% in the 2019/2020 farming season compared to the 2018/2019 farming season. Despite this aggressive increase, the local production still did not meet the national demand.
According to information made available to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT by the Zambia’s statistics agency – Zamstats, Sunflower production increased from 34,208 metric tonnes in the 2018/2019 farming season to 50,451 metric tonnes in the 2019/2020 farming season.
Sunflower demand has largely been driven by the demand for edible oils (cooking and industrial oils) as well as stock feed. Meanwhile, National Union for Small Scale Farmers in Zambia-NUSFAZ says the current production of Sunflower is not enough to satisfy the needs of the processors of edible oils and stock feed.
Union Executive Director Ebony Loloji said edible oil manufacturers have the capacity to process in excess of 80,000 metric tonnes but production is less than this capacity. There is also demand from livestock feed producers which is also growing.
Speaking in an interview with Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Loloji said the demand for sunflower is very high but the farmers are not able to meet the demand, adding that market availability is broad.
Loloji said there is need to educate farmers on how to go about producing the crop and the market availability, adding that if local farmers are given the market information at the right time, they will be able to make good decisions concerning venturing into sunflower production.
“If farmers are given information at the right time, they will be able to say okay fine, if I were to go into sunflower production, atleast I know that the market is readily available and am able to sell it at a competitive price and make a return or profit”, he said.
He also said that local famers need to be made aware of the fact that sunflower is a low input crop and is not as expensive to grow as other cash crops because it just needs compound D fertilizer as compared to maize which requires basal dressing and also top dressing.
“In terms of fertilizing for sunflower you just need around 4 bags of D compound for a hectare”, he said. Loloji mentioned that the oil from sunflower is of superior quality compared to soya beans and one gets more oil from sunflower for every kg that is crushed compared to soya beans.
“You need around 10kg of seed to plant one hectare compared to soya beans where you need about 100kg”, he said. He also said that the supply of seed was a challenge last farming season and hopes that there will be an improvement this year from seed companies.
“It was very difficult to source seed, there were so many seed companies that we contacted for the supply of sunflower seed but most of them were saying they had run out”, he said. Loloji also noted that there was an increase in the market price that was been offered in the last marketing season which was about K3.5 per kg, adding that it was better than the ruling prices for maize.
Zambian farmers have been caught up in the mono-cropping culture which have been heavily dependent on rains. Agro experts have contented that there is need for all year round and multi cropping for farming as a Business to reality in Zambia.
