BY LINDA MUJURU
The smell of freshly ploughed soil fills the air at a Kent Estates farm, about 50km from Harare.
Soft sounds of hoes piercing the soil echo from a distance. Farmers are at work. Those farmers are Godfrey Gosa and his employees toiling on his holding of 85 hectares.
Gosa began farming in 2004 after he became a beneficiary of Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme.
But today Gosa uses only 10 of those hectares, where he grows maize, sugar beans and leafy vegetables. The rest lie idle.
The land goes unused because Gosa’s farm was once a plantation of gum trees, and he doesn’t have the machinery to clear them. And he has lost faith in government efforts to help.
“I would spend weeks with nothing materialising because corruption dominated the programme,” said Gosa, referring to Zimbabwe’s current set-up to assist farmers, known as command agriculture.
“I was really tired of that.”
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
In 2000, Zimbabwe announced fast-track land reform, created to take property from the white minority and return millions of hectares to the black majority.
In this nation of farmers, it was a move that promised economic relief and power to black Zimbabweans, who at the time owned the country’s least valuable tracts and a fraction of the land overall.
Twenty years later, many farmers believe the promise of prosperity remains unfulfilled.
Vast tracts of land lie fallow because growers don’t have equipment and “inputs”, such as seed and fertiliser.
Frustrated farmers like Gosa say, among other challenges, government efforts meant to provide them with these necessities have been crippled by corruption and inefficiencies, leaving them with unproductive fields.
Farmers remain some of the few whose industries are not affected by a government lockdown intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus — at least not yet.
“People still need to eat,” Gosa said.
“In the long run, we foresee coronavirus affecting the economy as a whole and the agriculture sector will be affected too.”
Gosa isn’t the only one who sees farming as a necessity.
“Our economy is agriculture-based,” said Prince Kuipa, the chief economist of the Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union.
“This means agriculture is at the centre of everything.
“If the centre is not holding, it means the fertiliser companies do not have buyers, the industry is waiting for raw materials from farmers, and many of them have closed down — and, therefore, the economy dies.”
Neither the ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement nor the chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement responded to requests for interviews or to written questions.
About two-thirds of Zimbabwe’s 14.8 million people work in agriculture. They use 41% of the country’s 39 million hectares.
After Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, the new government made land reform a priority, but its efforts stalled.
Two decades later, white Zimbabweans still owned most of the nation’s farms and estates.
In the fast-track land reform that followed, the government redistributed state-owned land and also acquired 10,8 million hectares for reallocation.
The programme aimed to stabilise subsistence farmers and the landless, while positioning new black commercial farmers for economic success.
Yet over the next few years, financing for agriculture went down. In response, the government tried the farm mechanisation programme in 2007, in which farmers received equipment and loans that many did not repay.
Critics say corruption among both the political elite and farmers themselves led to its failure.
For example, some farmers got tractors from the government, Gosa says, but instead of using them for their fields, they sold them.
By 2010, the number of large commercial farms, owned mainly by whites, had plummeted by 72%.
Then in the 2016-17 farming season, the government tried to rescue the sector again with the current command agriculture programme, designed to boost local food production and guarantee food security.
Farmers who signed up agreed to produce at least 1 000 tonnes of maize and commit five tonnes per hectare to repay loans that came in the form of equipment and inputs.
Under the programme, farmers picked up seed and fertiliser from provincial offices. At those pick-up points, some agriculture extension officers gave inputs only to farmers they knew and took bribes from others, according to parliamentary reports and Gosa.
At times, disbursement of the inputs was delayed, and farmers received seed long after the planting season had passed.
Gosa (58), a retired army man who is married with six children, says such inefficiencies and mismanagement have left growers underfunded. He can grow only his few crops, selling some to commercial farmers to resell. He says he produces just enough to survive.
“It’s a hand-to-mouth situation,” says Gosa, a tall, fit man with hands muddy from planting. “I can’t save for anything.”
Juliet Chimimba (46) came to Kent Estates in 2004 with her four children, after being allocated land through the fast-track programme. She grows tobacco, sugar beans and maize.
She has 128 hectares, but farms only about 4% of the land.
“We don’t have capital, so we are struggling,” she said.
“We have maize ready for fertiliser, but we don’t have the money, so we will just make do without.
“We want to farm on a large-scale, but we can’t even utilise the land.”
Kuipa, the economist, says the problem of under-utilised land is complex. He notes that when fast-track land reform occurred, redistributed farms often came with houses, dams and tractors.
But he says land invasions resulted in theft and vandalism, leaving many farms barren.
Farmers are bedevilled by an array of challenges, including overdependence on the government, unreliable electricity supply and lack of irrigation capacity, said Ben Gilpin, director of the Commercial Farmers’ Union of Zimbabwe.
Last September, in time for the 2019-20 planting season, the government announced a new loan facility for farmers in a retooling of command agriculture.
Neither Kuipa nor Gilpin is confident that it will work.
Under the arrangement, the government backs bank loans to farmers for inputs, which growers may purchase from private suppliers.
Kuipa says it seems good for farmers and for banks — but risky for a government already wobbling under Zimbabwe’s economic woes.
In the meantime, farmers Gosa and Chimimba both say past disappointments have left them leery of the new initiative. They say they do not plan to participate. — Global Press Journal
