Sitting astride his motorbike, farmer Craig Jonathan (Not real name), scans his lucrative banana field in Matabeleland South province, one of the country’s top growers of the long yellow tropical fruit, with distraught and weariness.
BY TONDERAYI MATONHO
“I have not known any other home besides this farm and sadly I have to leave. I am contemplating relocating to a neighbouring country, where my services would be appreciated,“ he said.
Given three months to wind up his business, among them harvesting and exporting the tropical fruit, the 54-year-old farmer said his hard work over the past two decades has all come to naught.
“I have had to work very hard over the past two decades to produce this work and for all that I am being asked to leave to pave way for some senior government official,” Jonathan said. “Well, I have to leave, I cannot fight the authorities”.
Some evicted commercial farmers are still fighting for justice and have opted to go through the courts of law and some cases of evictions have been suspended.
These are now familiar situations experienced in recent years by the remaining embattled white farmers, kicked out of their productive farms by invaders, many of whom having been sent by high-ranking government officials to disrupt commitments on the farms and then seize the property, including furniture, clothes and even cutlery.
Ironically, the government, through the Lands and Rural Resettlement ministry, recently barred fresh farm invasions and warned that culprits would be prosecuted regardless of their political affiliation.
In the wake of such fresh farm evictions by government, replacing them with so-called “indigenous farmers” and even going as far as reintroducing tried and failed, Stalinist farming systems, critics are arguing: Will these seemingly oppressive and retrogressive systems and processes transform agriculture to modernisation on Zimbabwean farms?
The aftermath of the so-called Fast-track Land Reform Programme, has witnessed countless indigenous farmers, many of them “cellphone farmers”, taking over the farms and reaping where they did not sow.
A reader in one of NewsDay’s latest opinion pages, calling himself Pragg, says: “Until when will we have these farm invasions? Those in higher offices should find other pieces of lands to start their own projects, not invading where there is massive production already”.
Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries and those beyond in the Africa region, are now benefitting from these evicted farmers, realising that their economic prospects depend on their skills and ability to modernise their agricultural sector as a key contributor to development, poverty reduction and growth.
Meanwhile, the Command Agriculture programme is back, being touted by government as spearheading agriculture this time around. It has been necessitated by the rise in food insecurity, the government say, from about 12% in 2011 to 42% this year.
Just recently, Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa said farmers have shown an overwhelming response to the programme, which is expected to harvest two million tonnes of maize in the 2016-17 season at a cost of $515 million, prompting the government to consider extending the model to other crops.
The Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union has urged the government to extend Command agriculture for 15 years and said the country needed a long-term agricultural development plan to ensure food security and sustainable economic growth.
The government says more than 450 000 hectares have been dedicated towards the scheme. Zimbabwe needs about 2,2 million tonnes of maize annually for human and livestock consumption.
Before the catastrophic land reform programme, at the turn of the millennium, Zimbabwe had long been touted as a bread basket of Africa, particularly, the Southern African region.
The government insists the introduction of command agriculture will ensure food self-sufficiency and will enhance agricultural productivity and meet national requirements of more than a million tonnes of cereal per annum.
Government sources have further noted that the programme will also put at least 300 000 hectares of maize under irrigation, preferably drip irrigation, which is climate-smart.
However, a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the targets set by government are tough to meet primarily due to the moribund economy and the attendant lack of inputs and poor planning on the part of government.
“Until the economy returns to stability and banks become more accessible to farmers, command agriculture will become a disaster.
“Since the initial outlay is the first hurdle facing farmers, access to credit is often a key prerequisite for modernisation, so that farmers can buy land, material and inputs”, he said in a recent interview.
In 2006, through Operation Maguta/Inala, the government‘s attempt to boost agricultural production, failed dismally, producing less than a quarter of its projections despite reportedly being adequately subsidised.
The initiative, launched by President Robert Mugabe to improve food production, was projected to produce
2,3 million tonnes of maize, 90 000 tonnes of tobacco, 49 500 tonnes of maize seed, 210 000 tonnes of cotton, 750 000 tonnes of horticultural crops, and 8 250 tonnes of tea.
Reports from some provinces at the time, showed that not much would be harvested under the operation for many reasons, including theft of farm equipment by powerful politicians and senior government officials.
In Manicaland province, only 40 hectares out of a possible 224 hectares were put under maize crop at the once highly-productive Kondozi Estate, after six officials, among them former State Security minister Didymus Mutasa and Agriculture minister Joseph Made, reportedly took equipment from the estate.
In addition, the failure of such command-type agricultural programmes was exposed during the then Vice-President Joice Mujuru’s countrywide tours during the period under review.
In Masvingo, Mujuru was so disgusted by the lean harvest that she would not even finish inspecting the army-cultivated fields. She was shocked to see that nearly all the crop at the giant Nuanetsi estate was a total write-off. She cut short her inspection after viewing generally wilted crops.
Experts say following the launch of the often-violent land reform programme, food production tumbled by more than 70% over the past 15 years. At least 4 500 white commercial farmers lost their land to new black farmers.
The Presidential Input Scheme, which the government says will complement command agriculture, has in the past been marred by controversy, as opposition party members seldom benefited from the then Mugabe’s benevolence.
Some opposition political parties even castigated Mugabe and the Zanu PF party for sidelining their supporters using the scheme, which is supposed to benefit the nation at large, as nothing short of a vote-buying tool.
Experts note that agricultural transformation requires adapting to a new environment and facing evolving challenges.
“One of the key challenges is how to move away from land invasions and command type agriculture systems to business-oriented models of farming and entrepreneurship,” Freddy Gwaimani, a social development and vulnerability assessment consultant, said.
Many of the recent debates in developing countries have focused on what kind of farming to promote, in particular between family farming and agro-business.
Mnangagwa claimed that the government has already found financiers of the command agriculture scheme and will soon move into benefication; agro-business arising from agriculture and setting up agro-processing units on farms as part of employment creation, feeding into ZimAsset.
According to experts, while there might be good reasons for supporting family farming and agro-business, experience around the world clearly shows that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
The European Union experience shows that although the agri-food industry currently plays a predominant role, family farming is still very much alive and has an important role in ensuring food security and supporting regional development.
The Centre for Technical and Agricultural Co-operation (CTA), note that what is of critical importance is to recognise the need to have all stakeholders, including government, public and private institutions — to come together, develop a common vision, define targets and agree on the way forward.
CTA notes that in all this, entrepreneurship is the key to success as modernising agriculture provides jobs and livelihoods for many people. It is the key challenge that will continue to face most developing countries,[ including Zimbabwe], for the coming decades.