Tapuwa Mashangwa
AGRICULTURE is a broad sector unlimited to planting and harvesting crops. Neither is it about animal breeding or rearing. When the crops and animals are ready for sale, the agro-processing industry breathes its life.

Agriculture and industry have traditionally been viewed as two separate sectors both in terms of their characteristics and their role in economic growth.

Agriculture has been considered the hallmark of the first stage of development, while the degree of industrialisation has been taken to be the most relevant indicator of a country’s progress along the development path.

Moreover, the proper strategy for growth has often been conceived as one of a more or less gradual shift from agriculture to industry, with the onus on agriculture to finance the shift in the first stage.

This view, however, no longer appears to be appropriate. On the one hand, the role of agriculture in the process of development has been reappraised and revalued from the point of view of its contribution to industrialisation and its importance for harmonious development and political and economic stability.

On the other hand, agriculture itself has become a form of industry, as technology, vertical integration, marketing and consumer preferences have evolved along lines that closely follow the profile of comparable industrial sectors, often of notable complexity and richness of variety and scope.

This has meant that the deployment of resources in agriculture has become increasingly responsive to market forces and increasingly integrated in the network of industrial interdependencies.

Agricultural products are shaped by technologies of growing complexity, and they incorporate the results of major research and development efforts as well as increasingly sophisticated individual and collective preferences regarding nutrition, health and the environment.

While one can still distinguish the phase of production of raw materials from the processing and transformation phase, often this distinction is blurred by the complexity of technology and the extent of vertical integration: the industrialisation of agriculture and development of agroprocessing industries is thus a joint process which is generating an entirely new type of industrial sector.

A common and traditional definition of agro-processing industry refers to the subset of manufacturing that processes raw materials and intermediate products derived from the agricultural sector.

Agro-processing industry thus means transforming products originating from agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

Indeed, a very large part of agricultural production undergoes some degree of transformation between harvesting and final use.

The industries that use agricultural, fishery and forest products as raw materials comprise a very varied group. They range from simple preservation (such as sun drying) and operations closely related to harvesting to the production, by modern, capital-intensive methods, of such articles as textiles, pulp and paper.

Most preservation techniques, for example, are basically similar over a whole range of perishable food products, whether they be fruits, vegetables, milk, meat or fish.

In fact, the processing of the more perishable food products is to a large extent for the purpose of preservation.

Agro-processing industry can be classified by the non-food agricultural products and the food agricultural products.

Non-food industries, in contrast to the food industries, have a wide variety of end uses.

Almost all non-food agricultural products require a high degree of processing.

Much more markedly than with the food industries, there is usually a definite sequence of operations, leading through various intermediate products before reaching the final product.

Because of the value added at each of these successive stages of processing, the proportion of the total cost represented by the original raw material diminishes steadily.

A further feature of the non-food industries is that many of them now increasingly use synthetics and other artificial substitutes (especially fibres) in combination with natural raw materials.

Another useful classification of agroprocessing industry is in upstream and downstream industries.

Upstream industries are engaged in the initial processing of agricultural commodities. Examples are rice and flour milling, leather tanning, cotton ginning, oil pressing, saw milling and fish canning.

Downstream industries undertake further manufacturing operations on intermediate products made from agricultural materials.

Examples are bread, biscuit and noodle making, textile spinning and weaving; paper production; clothing and footwear manufacturing; and rubber manufacture.

A further specification is related to the nature of the production process which, in many cases, can range from craft to industrial organisation. For example, in some developing countries the same good may be produced both by handloom weavers working in their own home and by large textile factories that have sophisticated machinery and complex systems of organisation and that produce a range of industrial products for the domestic and external markets.

In such cases, it can be misleading to define agro-processing industry just on the basis of the goods produced because only the second method of production mentioned has industrial characteristics.

The integration of agriculture and agro-processing will always be intertwined and interdependent to promote a greener future.

• The writer is Engineer Tapuwa Justice Mashangwa, a young entrepreneur based in Bulawayo, Founder and CEO of Emerald Agribusiness Consultancy. He can be contacted on +263 739 096 418 and email: [email protected].