The Zimbabwe Review: farming

Showing posts with label farming. Show all posts

No loans to actual farmers in Agribank’s ‘very good loan book’

Feb 14, 2012

Agribank seems to have pulled off the neat trick of 'supporting agriculture,' but very carefully avoiding lending to the people who actually work the land; farmers.

The messy nexus of land, property rights and race in Southern Africa

Jan 31, 2012

by Chido Makunike

Eddie Cross is an MDC MP with strong, frequently publicly articulated views on many issues, including the hot one of land. He has sometimes been referred to as the MDC’s ‘policy advisor,’ so his views on this subject are interesting as a window into the ‘advice’ he gives to his party on this deeply contentious issue. He argues that traditional, communal ownership of land; without individual title deeds, works against ‘development’ and against freedom and democracy. How do his arguments tie into Zimbabwe’s past and present?

Agriculture minister's deeply flawed arguments against GMOs

Jan 18, 2012

Genetic modification of food crops is an emotive, deeply contentious issue almost all over the world, even in some countries where it is now established practice. So that Zimbabwe’s agriculture minister is against the practice is not unusual. But his stated reasons are embarrassingly, intellectually weak, especially for someone who has an advanced degree in agriculture.

ZANU-PF’ ‘empowerment, MDC’s ‘more investment’ need not be seen as contradictory

Dec 28, 2011

ZANU-PF and the MDC will start 2012 with a heightened awareness that a crucial election for them and for the country is not far away, whatever the final dates will be. As the parties sell themselves to the voters, it has become clear that their visions of how to bring about an economically prosperous Zimbabwe are starkly different. But are ‘empowerment’ and ‘attracting investment’ best thought of as opposing philosophies, or as two sides of the same coin?

Land and race in Zimbabwe: A new review, itself worthy of review, of the book ‘Mugabe and the White African’

Nov 15, 2011

Mugabe and the White African is a film about a white protagonist’s attempts to resist being moved off his farm by the government of President Robert Mugabe. It played to limited but sympathetic audiences in the West, but made no traction at all in Zimbabwe or anywhere else in the black world, which admittedly was not the target audience anyway. There were very few black reviews of it, and none that were positive. A book of the same name as the film, authored by the film lead’s son in law, has received an interesting scorching review by Percy Zvomuya in the Mail and Guardian.

The effect a farming season’s maize surplus would have on Zimbabwe’s land reform

Nov 13, 2011

by Chido Makunike

After many years of stagnation and regression, there has in recent years been a sense of Zimbabwe’s agriculture being positively on the move. As the 2011/12 cropping season gets under way, if the rain pattern is favorable, the country will take another annual step towards what will be a watershed event with very far-reaching effects in Zimbabwe and beyond: the first maize surplus since land reform began a decade ago.

What future for Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers’ Union?

Nov 9, 2011

From being one of Zimbabwe’s most powerful and influential non-governmental bodies, the Commercial Farmers Union struggles to be heard at all today. Most of its members have been unceremoniously dispossessed of their farms, leaving the representative body of the country’s large-scale white farmers struggling for relevance. Is there much of a future for the CFU?

More examples of how donor dependence compromises African sovereignty

Oct 20, 2011

By most accounts, Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is a nasty fellow. This alone wouldn't be enough to earn him being distanced by most of Africa's rulers, few of whom can be considered cute and cuddly fellows. But that al-Bashir is welcome in the company of African leaders is still odd because of the particular nature of his alleged badness. Arab al-Bashir is accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sudan's ethnically African Darfur region. One would have thought this would be one reason to make African leaders at least avoid al-Bashir like the plague, but that hasn't been the case. What gives?

Another eviction shows farm tenure security is a long way off

Oct 4, 2011

There has been a lot of loose talk recently about various schemes to avail finance to new, post-land reform farmers. Some of the details of a recent/on-going reported eviction of an 'old' white farmer show why security of tenure cannot be counted on as an element in giving financiers confidence to lend money for farming in Zimbabwe in any big way.

Ministry of Agriculture hasn't updated its website in more than a year

Sep 25, 2011

If Zimbabwe's decade of deep economic problems meant that it fell behind many other countries in its development of an internet culture, in the last couple of years the country has begun to catch up. There is therefore absolutely no excuse for the Ministry of Agriculture to have last updated its website way back in 2010.

Why Zimbabwe's farm expropriations will not be reversed after Mugabe

Sep 6, 2011

by Chido Makunike

In the Western media it is called 'Mugabe's land grab.' That terminology is partly to indicate not just the reality of how it was done, but to also show deep disapproval. Indeed, expropriating land from white farmers is one of the main reasons Mugabe is now depicted as a particular figure of hate in the West. However, a side effect of the narrative that he simply took productive land out of a fit of racial hate and then parceled it out to his 'cronies' is that it gives the false impression that Zimbabwe's controversial land reform might be temporary; to be reversed after 'dictator Mugabe' exits the scene. Here's in brief why that is not going to happen.

Zim land reform: unsustainable new farming system replacing an unsustainable old system

Sep 1, 2011

Why land reform of one kind or another had to take place in Zimbabwe is well known, as are the problems that have resulted from the method that was chosen. While the new, still-in-progress system of agriculture is clearly not meeting the various needs required of it, an article about the current eviction of one of the remaining farmers from the old system also points to how it was a system that despite being once highly functional, had fallen behind the times in many ways. The old system has been decimated, but the new system cannot really work as currently structured. It is becoming clear that shifting ownership of who occupies which land is just one step in a long process of coming up with a new system of land management and of agriculture.

A slightly more balanced article about transplanted Zimbabwean farmers' challenges in Nigeria

Aug 31, 2011

There is yet another article, this time on the BBC, tracking the progress of the white Zimbabwean farmers who were invited to setup shop by a regional government in Nigeria.While most such article have depicted the handful of Zim farmers as almost miracle workers suddenly transforming Nigerian agriculture while the locals look on expectantly and helplessly, this one is a little bit more honest about the great challenges the farmers face in their new environment.

Farm lease changes unlikely to make banks eager to dole out loans

After Zimbabwe's land reform (or land grab, depending on your point of view), it was belatedly realized that possession did not automatically lead to productivity and wealth. Among the many impediments to farm productivity identified is the fact that the new farmers are lease-holders rather than owners of the land they work, and so cannot use that land as collateral to apply for bank finance. Changes have been made to the clauses of the 99-year leases to take into account the reasons for banks' reluctance to get involved in farm lending. Although the bankers' association is reported to be pleased and reassured about those changes, it is a patchwork solution that is unlikely to achieve the desired results.

The shift in Zimbabwe's farming profile

Aug 4, 2011

Many African countries have decided that their heavy reliance on small scale farmers is one reason for low productivity and recurrent food shortages. This is one reason they are encouraging the controversial practice of letting big foreign agro concerns to come in and lease or buy huge portions of farmland. Zimbabwe has effectively gone the other direction, from dominance by large scale farmers to almost exclusive reliance on small and medium scale farmers. Is one more 'right' than the other?

The perils of donor dependency, fully on display in Malawi under Mutharika

Jul 25, 2011

Zimbabwe's usually peaceful northern neighbor Malawi is in sudden turmoil, with an unexpected descent into political violence in which 20 people or more were shot to death by police, and many more injured. The social and economic pressures leading up to the crisis are not much different from those in Zimbabwe and many other countries all over the world. But there is an aspect of the recent tightening of those pressures that should be heeded by all African countries, including a Zimbabwe just coming out of isolation and looking for solutions to its economic problems.

Farm invasions as a form of political control

Jul 10, 2011

One of the unfinished businesses of Zimbabwe's land reform exercise is to establish confidence amongst new farmers that their tenure is secure and can be legally protected when contested. However, that basic requirement for long-term farming development seems to clash against the need in some quarters to maintain tenure on farms as a political tool of control.

A good, brief summary of Zimbabwe agriculture, land issues

Jul 9, 2011

The New Agriculturalist website has a good summary of the present state of Zimbabwe's agriculture. The article by Zimbabwean journalist Busani Bufana is well-researched and dense, but also brief and very readable.

Zimbabwean farmers in Nigeria: As many questions as answers

Jun 30, 2011

There is yet another article about the experience of Zimbabwean farmers who were recruited to Nigeria by a regional governor. But as with many previous such articles, there remain many unanswered questions about what the important lessons are for agricultural development in Nigeria, or anywhere else in Africa.

Is it time for Zimbabwe to give up trying to grow wheat?

Jun 15, 2011

As Zimbabwe's wheat production continues to decline precipitously each year, the viability of growing this crop at all versus importing it will have to be assessed.

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