There appears to be a conflict in policies when it comes to cotton, with one major manufacturing company adding value to the crop now having to shut down large portions of its factory since it cannot get enough lint, which has been exported as raw material.

The farmers have been resuscitating the crop, increasing harvests despite the poor deals they had until recently, but looking forward to better times as the Government steps in with inputs and the required funding to buy the crop.

But for some weird and unexplained reason, only 30 percent of the lint that comes out of the ginneries is allocated to the local market. 

And even weirder, the local spinners are required to reserve half the yarn they spin for local weavers, who in some cases are themselves.

Yet under major strategies for development and economic growth, the thrust and the intention is for Zimbabwean manufacturers to convert the raw materials the farmers grow and the miners dig up into manufactured products, or at least add value in preliminary processing. 

Of course, surpluses must be exported, but those exports are supposed to be the manufactured products, or the extra value products. 

We, therefore, earn more in exports by sending out higher value products, and we need to remember that a significant chunk of this extra value is made up of the wages of the skilled workers who add value, because there are more jobs, as well as the extra taxes paid on the higher revenue and all those things the manufacturers buy, often from other Zimbabwean companies, to make their goods.

But we have Zimbabwe Spinners and Weavers, a large industrial concern by Zimbabwean standards, having to lay off 241 workers from its spinning plant, which it has been forced to close down because there is no more lint available right now, with another 100 due to go from the weaving section next week and even more from the knitting section probably in a fortnight.

Zimbabwe Spinners and Weavers last year wanted 11 percent of the 54 000 tonnes of cotton lint that were produced by our farmers. 

But out of those desired 6 000 tonnes they got just 3 000 tonnes, half what they could use and add a lot of value to as they spun yarn and then wove cloth. 

Other spinners and weavers were even worse off, asking for between 2 500 and 3 000 tonnes each, but getting just 1 000 tonnes each.

What is totally astounding is that the Agricultural Marketing Authority is quite smug, and thinks it deserves praise, for reserving 30 percent of the crop for the local factories, as if this is some sort of major concession. 

Admittedly some of the raw buyers of cotton are also at fault, wanting to export as much of the lint as possible to earn instant foreign currency, and thanks to the export retention schemes they can keep more than half of that currency.

Yet if all our surplus cotton lint was exported as yarn and cloth, the country would earn a lot more foreign currency, a lot more jobs would be created, and economic growth would be assured. 

Even just allocating the minimums required by existing plant and machinery would have meant 341 plus jobs now gone or about to go would have been secure.

There are also the foreign currency savings by producing the cloth and yarn we need in Zimbabwe. 

Anyone going round the shops that sell textiles will see the bulk, including the cotton fabrics, come from other countries, with major Asian industrial giants predominating. 

We should be in the group of those countries, packing textiles not cotton in the export containers. So what can be done with cotton deliveries from this year’s harvest starting and the ginning about to start.

We obviously need to ensure that local industry gets basically all the seed, which is processed for cooking oil and we import far too much oil seed when we can grow our own, and our spinners get all the cotton lint they can spin, with these spinners also pressed to see how much further they can boost production if they are assured of supplies. 

Any raw materials left over when our own industry is fully supplied can be exported, but even then we need to make it clear that expansion in the factories, and new factories, are welcome and any gap between what extra the farmers grow and what extra the textile industry can process is purely temporary as we wait for new machines to arrive.

This should not be any problem. The Government has now assumed, thanks to failures in the cotton companies, the leading role in ensuring that farmers can both grow and sell their crop at a profit.

This means the Government can make the policy, on the basis that the person who puts up the cash can demand that we get maximum benefit from a crop.

We do this already with food crops, ensuring that all the grain and oil seed we grow stays inside Zimbabwe and with any exports, which would require at present yields at least two really good seasons in row, being done through a Government-owned parastatal.

Even in tobacco, there is continual pressure on the tobacco industry to explore ways of exporting cigarettes rather than raw tobacco, so we can enhance the value of our exports. 

Spinners could well build their own supply chains, working with farmers to see how they can help increase supply in return for guaranteed supplies. 

There will be some capital problems with this at first, since spinning and weaving went through a very bad patch and the industrialists are still rebuilding, but every bit helps.

But the main thrust must be pushing hard to implement that national policy that we grow as much of everything that we can, and we process as much of what we grow as we can in Zimbabwe, with the target being the lot. 

The daftness of having to close down the major part of a large factory and send the workers home because we exported the raw material instead of pushing the factory to export the extra yarn and cloth must not happen again. What we are doing right now is exporting jobs with a vengeance. 

We do not need to do this.

What we do need to do is have lots of Zimbabweans earning a decent living from cotton, growing it, spinning it, weaving it and sewing a lot of quality                                                   clothing. 

And the whole industry should be a seamless procession from farm, to ginnery, to spinner to weaver to clothing factory to boxes of shirts being unpacked in some foreign country with nifty little “Made in Zimbabwe” labels in the collar.

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