Miranda Mpabanga, Yummy Organic Foods Projects Manager
BY MUNYARADZI BLESSING DOMA
Yummy Organic Foods is showcasing the importance of value addition by processing crops produced on its farm into a range of products for the market.
The company, which operates at Chivaraidze Farm, is producing a variety of products including wheat flour, soya bean cooking oil and mealie-meal, with the farm-to-table approach aimed at ensuring that raw agricultural produce is processed locally.
Speaking during the Seed Co Wheat Field Day held at Rattray Arnold Research Station on Tuesday, Miranda Mpabanga, Projects Manager at Yummy Organic Foods said they are committed to adding value to agricultural produce from the source.
“Our mantra is value addition from source to table, ensuring that everything is grown and processed in one place for our communities,” the representative said.
The company grows wheat which is processed into flour, including biscuit flour, which is then taken to the market.
The farm also produces soya beans which are processed into cooking oil, while maize grown on the farm is processed at the company’s milling plant to produce mealie-meal.
Mpabanga said the company was also involved in water processing and had an abattoir where they sells meat.
“We also have soya bean that’s planted in our farms. Hence we process it and we produce cooking oil. This is soya bean oil. We also have mealie-meal that we have as Yummy Organic Foods.
“We plant the maize ourselves and we also process it in our milling plant. So basically our mantra is value addition from source to table.”
Professor Obert Jiri applauded Chivaraidze Farm for embracing value addition and called on farmers to make use of quality seed to produce high-quality products.
He said Zimbabwe had to take advantage of its seed security to produce quality agricultural products that could compete on the export market.
“Let’s ensure that we utilise that good seed security that we have, to produce good quality products for our country,” Professor Jiri said.
He said he was impressed by the quality and packaging of Yummy Organic Foods’ products.
“I saw Yummy Organic Foods that have Yummy flour, it’s written organic. I saw the packaging and I said this is export quality.
“And that is what we want, to produce quality products for export and like what Seed Co says, it starts with the right seed.”
The value-addition model comes at a time when farmers and agro-processors are being encouraged to move beyond the production of raw commodities and process agricultural produce locally.
By producing, processing and marketing its products under one value chain, Yummy Organic Foods is demonstrating how agricultural production can create additional economic value while bringing processed products closer to consumers.
