Zimbabwe launches overdue plan to assist drought-hit farmers
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation – Wed, 5 Jun 2013 10:15 AM
Author: Madalitso Mwando
LUPANE, Zimbabwe (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Ticky Mletshwa, a
46-year-old small-scale farmer, has always done the same thing in his plot
deep in the dry rural areas of Lupane, about 175 kilometres north of
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city.
Here each year, with the regularity of clockwork, he plants maize, waits for
the rains, then “cries” as he watches his crops fail after yet another
period of unreliable rainfall.
“It has become a cruel cycle,” he says, of repeating the same thing and
expecting to get different results.
Mletshwa, like many smallholder farmers in the area, used to barter his
excess produce to city dwellers in Bulawayo. Now he does not remember when
he last had a full silo.
“Now we find ourselves having to ask our children working in South Africa to
send us mealie meal (maize meal),” he said.
Lupane is one of numerous areas in Matebeleland, in the southwest of
Zimbabwe, from which hundreds of young people have fled increasing hardship
to seek employment outside the country, including as farm labourers in
neighbouring South Africa and Botswana.
But help finally may be on the way, as Zimbabwe’s government, hit by
worsening food insecurity, moves to adopt more hands-on assistance to
farmers, particularly those on small rain-fed plots of land.
Last month, President Robert Mugabe launched the country’s first Food and
Nutrition Security Policy, which aims to address climate change and other
environmental problems that have vexed farmers like Mletshwa.
EXPORTER TURNED IMPORTER
The launch comes as the Zimbabwean government has asked Zambia for 150,000
tonnes of maize, a radical reversal of the situation before Zimbabwe’s
chaotic land reform programme of 2000. Until that time, Zimbabwe had been a
net food exporter, including to southern African countries such as Zambia.
According to Mugabe, the new food security policy is a response to
“recurrent and intermittent droughts” that have resulted in spiralling food
prices and have left many Zimbabweans increasingly food insecure.
In March this year, the World Food Programme announced that up to 1.7
million Zimbabweans would require food assistance this year, up from 1.3
million last year, as smallholders who previously produced the bulk of the
country’s maize continued to suffer from uncertain rainfall and lack of
infrastructure.
“The food and nutrition security policy provides a framework for a cohesive
multi-sectoral action programme with a shared vision and strategy for
improved food and nutrition security,” President Mugabe told journalists at
the launch.
The policy is aimed at “especially small-holder farmers and women so that
they (can) access cheap finance, knowledge on climate and the environment,
smart farming systems, infrastructure and farm machinery,” he said.
Critics and farmer representatives, however, say the policy is late in
coming. The country has largely failed to address the impacts of climate
change and other environmental issues, they say, and this has worsened food
production with each cropping season.
ACTION LONG OVERDUE
“It’s been left until too late,” said John Hwalima, a Bulawayo-based
agriculture consultant.
“The signs have been there since the turn of the century that some serious
thinking must be done in the agriculture sector but this has not happened.
What we are seeing now is government reacting to the hard times, when there
was ample time to be proactive,” Hwalima said.
“Climate change is real and will require more than a talk shop. For example,
what should be happening, or should have happened, is investment in
infrastructure for small-holder farmers, something like small dams and
irrigation schemes, which as we know some white commercial farms had before
the land seizures,” he said.
The announcement of a national food and nutrition policy comes after the
government last year announced it was working on climate change policy
research. The findings or recommendations, however, have not been made
public.
Admire Mare, a development consultant in Harare, says the government will
need to invest in and include smallholder farmers in its plans if it hopes
to restore crop production in Zimbabwe.
“Solutions lie in the capacity building of small-scale farmers through the
resuscitation of agricultural extension services and subsidised input
schemes,” Mare said.
To ease the impacts of climate change, investment in fast-growing maize
varieties and in dam construction and irrigation projects are an
“indispensable necessity,” he said. “Any food security policy that ignores
investment in irrigation and water harvesting techniques is bound to fail,”
he warned.
In March, the government announced it was crafting legislation aimed at
boosting irrigation that would compel financial institutions to make more
money available to agricultural producers, who were once the country’s
largest foreign currency earners.
Meanwhile, farmers in hard-hit areas are still waiting for help, with little
understanding that climate change may be contributing to the worsening
extreme weather.
Nomathemba Mthimkhulu, 54, another smallholder in Lupane, blames the region’s
increasingly poor rains on social aberrations.
“We cannot have enough food from our fields with all these loose morals and
Satanism around,” she said from her homestead, where she looks after seven
grandchildren.
“You see these children? They will never know all the traditional food I
grew up eating because the gods are punishing us by withholding the rains
because of all these bad things happening,” she said.
Madalitso Mwando is a journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe.