$17bn lost to land reform chaos
Financial Gazette 8/5/2018
Tabitha Mutenga Staff Reporter
ZIMBABWE has lost nearly $17 billion in agricultural exports and production to land invasions since 2000, independent economist John Robertson says. This disclosure comes as President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has been desperate to revive the sector through a cocktail of measures, including revision of land ownership laws, expansion of productive agriculture and recalling white former commercial farmers displaced during the chaotic agrarian reforms.
“To calculate the total loss incurred by the /country…. the $16,9 billion worth of production lost would only be the start (and) Zimbabwe became a net importer … from 1998 as most of the food-processing companies reduced output, then closed down when commercial farming suppliers went down,” Robertson said.
“Others were forced to close when price controls were imposed. Non-food agricultural declines such as cotton and timber production also caused the failure of most textile, clothing and paper-making companies,” the seasoned economist said, adding that resultant “food, textiles and paper imports over; the past 20 years have more than surpassed aggregate exports then”.
According to Robertson, the country lost $4,8 billion in cotton and tobacco production from the year 2001 to 2016, nearly $4 billion in maize production, $1.8 billion in sugarcane exports, $1 billion in wheat production and $700 million in soyabean yields.
And if losses from beef, dairy and 16 other commodities — including those from the horticulture sector — were factored in, then the figure could go beyond $20 billion.
Other crops included in the independent consultant’s recent paper at a Bulawayo agricultural symposium include barley — with an accumulated production loss of $15 million — tea at $310 million and coffee farmers having lost $259 million over the past 18 years.
With continued invasions and disruptions that have seen the displacement of 4 500 large-scale commercial farmers since the turn of the millennium, Zimbabwe had become a net importer of basic foodstuffs and staple grains until about last year when it embarked on its so-called command farming concept, as agriculture was decimated by up to 80 percent.
“For lack of pricing information, agricultural revenues not accounted for… include at least 16 other products such as pork, poultry, sorghum, millets, sunflower, groundnuts, paprika citrus, deciduous fruits, macadamia nuts, avocados and grass seed,” Robertson said.
With production in terminal decline, the country’s import bill has been running at a higher scale than export earnings — at nearly $5 billion last year against exports of only $2,9 billion.
Reuben Muzvagwandonga, another sectorial economist, also concurred that overall losses could have hit the $17 billion mark, as his own calculations were that the country was losing an average $1 billion per year.
Agricultural economist Dale Dore added that the calculations were feasible as long as they were pointing to an economic loss.
“It depends whether the data expresses financial losses or economic losses. A financial loss would be the difference between input costs and prices of outputs. But I think (Robertson) is referring to an economic loss – being the difference between actual output and the “potential” output. If that is the case, then the $16,9 billion is quite feasible,” he said.
“Economists have been tracking the fallout from the detrimental action government took in the year 2000 (and) the figures can be defended in court (and prove that) from September 2000 to August 2017, an accumulated loss from the eight million hectares of productive land was $16,9 billion,” David Conolly, a Centenary farmer, said.
To boost production and improve agricultural performance, experts have been calling on Mnangagwa’s administration to expedite the process of stabilising Zimbabwe’s land tenure system by giving new farmers full title to land and ensure that previous owners were fully compensated.
Hence, the new government has sought to encourage investment, restore security and the land through leases, which critics still believe are not good enough as lessors have a right to terminate them on a 90-day notice and, thereby, exposing, potential partners as farm lenders and other long-term financiers.
With agriculture contributing 15 percent-plus of the country’s gross domestic product, the Harare administration has not only sought to place the sector as its key economic mainstay, but achieve stability and predictability through more favourable policies. [email protected],