Turmeric, ginger production scales up
By BUUMBA CHIMBULU
PRODUCTION of turmeric and ginger has increased to more than 700 kilogramme (kg) in 2021 from 600 Kg owing to high demand of spices on the local and regional market.
Petauke based smallholder horticulture farmer, Andrew Kamanga, indicated that his business had been getting 600kg of turmeric and ginger for the last two years, which now increased to over 700kg.
Mr Kamanga said that he had received a number of requests from Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as well as on the local market for ginger and turmeric.
The market for ginger, I am getting a lot of request from Zimbabwe, the market is all over this country except we don’t have organised market, and we don’t have many people to produce the herbs and spices,” he said in an interview recently.
Mr Kamanga moved to Petauke seven years ago growing fruits and vegetables, mostly nurseries and now was into ginger and turmeric production as it was a cash crop.
“Initially people didn’t know how you can get turmeric because our history was that turmeric was just one plant at the village but now you can get turmeric almost every year when you plant it.
“The most important thing about ginger and turmeric is that you don’t actually need fertilizer as long as you have compost manure,” he explained.
Mr Kamanga said plans would be underway in future to setup a processing plant where ginger and turmeric could be processed into finished products.
He said the current situation where, he uses pounding mortar to produce a fine powder of either ginger or turmeric was compromising on the quality of the spices.
“In future we plan to have a small processing plant because most of it when you pound, it doesn’t become fine,” Mr Kamanga said.
He called on Government to promote the horticulture smallholder farmers and support them with seeds as it was difficult to find quality seeds for both turmeric and ginger.
Mr Kamanga said it was also important for smallholder farmers like him to setup a cooperative so as to have an organised market.
Turmeric, ginger production scales up
