Thursday 14 June 2012

Food security in Zimbabwe: The White Farmer Factor?


Most of what Eddie Cross says in response to my earlier blog article, is in agreement with my own analysis. He confirms that even when white commercial farmers were in full unhindered operation there were seasons when Zimbabwe had to import food. He also confirms that there is a large variation in seasonal rainfall (40% is the figure he gives) which influences food security at household level.

My original post was focused on household food security. Eddie expands the picture to include commercial agriculture. Again I do not deny that farm invasions were a significant blow to commercial agriculture.

Eddie is right that living standards were low in communal areas. But it is patently false to claim that those of farmworkers were higher. Peasants had secure (though not legally recognized) tenure on their land. They could accumulate property, mainly cattle and farming implements, which could serve as a savings base or pension.

On the other hand, farm workers had scant job security. Eddie touts a figure of 2 million farm workers but forgets to mention that most of them were seasonal workers who only had jobs during the rainy season and moved to the communal lands during the dry season. Those who nominally lived on the farms had little job security and hopped from farm to farm, because of frequent firings, with barely the clothes on their backs. When they grew too old to work most had nowhere to go except the communal lands. Most became the poorest members of the communal communities becuase they would not have been able to accumulate property while working on farms.

I fully agree with the point that removing 30% of production will lead to serious shortages. However the reason why I tend to emphasize other factors is to counter the unspoken racist insinuation that blacks can't feed themselves and need whites to feed them.

I have never disputed that the decline in commercial agriculture contributed to overall decline in agricultural output, but I strenuously object to attempts to pass it off as the sole reason for 'starvation' in Zimbabwe.

I grew up in rural Zimbabwe and all my life I know rural communities are not fed by commercially grown maize. They either grow their own maize or, in times of drought, imported maize. That is why rotary hammer mills (zvigayo) for grinding maize into flour are ubiquitous in Zimbabwe's rural areas.

The removal of white farmers was always going to negatively affect the macro-economy of the country, but it would have improved the micro-economy of the peasant farmers significantly if it had not been accompanied by price controls and trade restrictions. Given that 70% of Zimbabwe's population live in the rural areas this would have significantly improved lives.

Poor economic policies and trade restrictions also significantly affected sectors of the economy which had nothing to do with farming such as mining and services.

Other factors also contribute to the increasing frequency of food shortages in Zimbabwe. The growing population has put a tremendous strain on the ability of communal lands people to continue being self sustaining on the same little land that was allocated to native reserves almost a century ago. The land for native reserves was barely sufficient then, and there is absolutely no chance it will be sufficient now.

To give an anecdotal example, Chiraramiro village, where my mother comes from, originally had six families, Chiraramiro (the Headman), Vambe, Nyamanza, Matambo, Musasiwa and Muketa families. Chiraramiro and Vambe had more than five sons each, including the famous Hahuhunhanzvi (You will never lick this beer). Muketa had three. So by the time of my mothers generation the families had increased to more than 16.

In my generation, each of these 16 families have had three sons on average. The same land that was barely sufficient for six families is now expected to support nearly 50 families. Needless to say there is absolutely no chance all these 50 families being self sustaining without jobs elsewhere. Urbanisation has led many members of the families into towns, where the situation is not much better. Jobs were scant even before the economic collapse.

Some say the economy collapsed because white farmers were chased away. I say the economy collapsed mainly because politicians are stealing or otherwise misusing the money. A ravenous kleptocracy is chewing up more than its fair share of resources.

That climate change is also playing havoc with food security is also increasingly becoming apparent. Of late the rains start in late November sometimes December. Yet the rains used to start around September and October.

As some may know the name gukurahundi (the rains that wash away the chaf) refers to rains that fell around August, soon after people finished processing their harvests. Now that name remains in use only because it was the nickname given to the Fifth Brigade, the army division accused of committing atrocities in Matebeleland provinces in the mid-1980s. Otherwise rains in August a virtually unheard of nowadays.

Yes the removal of white farmers did affect Zimbabwean agricultural, but it would be folly to ignore the numerous other factors also at play. It is also folly to think that the land question can be solved by simply restoring the colonial status quo which is what most white farmers seem to be hoping for.

The major sticking point at the moment seems to be who is responsible for compensating evicted farmers, with Mugabe saying it is the responsibility of the British, and the British saying they are not liable for the sins of their forefathers. At least this is what Claire Short said in a letter to the Zimbabwe government.

Food Production in Zimbabwe - By Eddie Cross, MP


The following is a direct response to my earlier blog post Absence of white farmers not the reason for Zimbabwe's food shortages. Eddie Cross is an MP for Bulawayo South constituency in the Zimbabwe parliament representing the MDC (Tsvangirai faction). He would have been serving in ministerial capacity in the Zimbabwe government, but was denied the opportunity for ethnic and tribal reasons.
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Dear Jupiter

I read your note on the link between food production and the destruction of white owned farms and thought that it needed a response. As you might know I was Chief Economist at the Agricultural Marketing Authority up to Independence and have been involved in agriculture here all my life.

You concentrate on maize production, as this is the primary staple that is understandable. Communal farmers (70 per cent of the population until the recent collapse of the economy and the rural economy) always aimed to produce their own food. Generally over time this meant that 60 per cent of national maize production came from the Communal areas. Because of the nature of subsistence agriculture, low tech, low inputs, yields were always low and the areas cultivated huge – some 2 million hectares were cultivated annually. If we had good rains this produced a surplus and shortages when rains were poor.

Zimbabwe has a 40 per cent mean variation in rainfall (the US is 5 per cent). This means that we get huge variations in rainfall from year to year. 1983, 1992 were exceptionally bad years and only massive imports saved the country from starvation. The other crops where communal farmers dominated were sorghum, millet, ground nuts and beans. Perhaps we could add sweet potatoes and air dried tobacco. Living standards were low =- perhaps a third of the standard of living on commercial farms – it is interesting to note that population density on commercial farms was nearly as great as on communal farms, commercial farmers supported a population of about 2 million people in 1997 on about 8 million hectares of land. Communal areas population was about 4 million on 16 million hectares, the difference being that the majority of the communal land were in regions 3, 4 and 5 – arid and semi arid areas. 70 per cent of region 1 land is communal but that is restricted to the Eastern Highlands.

What made the Commercial farmers (4800 white and 1200 black) so important (70 per cent of gross agricultural output) was the productivity and technologically advanced nature of their operations. They irrigated 270 000 hectares of land – most of it as supplementary irrigation in dry years, they produced about 600 000 tonnes of maize a year (we need 1,8 million tonnes a year – 1,2 million tonnes for human consumption and 600 000 tonnes for industry and stockfeed. But in a dry year they could irrigate much of the crop and guarantee some output. Commercial farmers produced virtually all the wheat (400 000 tonnes), all the barley (40 000 tonnes) and 95 per cent of the tobacco (250 000 tonnes a year) and 90 per cent of all soybeans (120 000 tonnes). Then they produced all the tea – 90 per cent of the coffee, all the milk (260 000 tonnes) and all the fruit (citrus and pome – about 75 000 tonnes a year). In the meat industry they produced about 60 per cent of the poultry, 70 per cent of the beef and 85 per cent of the pig meat – altogether about 350 000 tonnes a year.

When you put this all together, Commercial farmers generated about 70 per cent of gross agricultural output, half of all exports and a third of employment and 60 per cent of the raw materials getting to local industry. They supported over 2 million people directly on farms at a standard that was significantly better than in the communal areas where absolute poverty existed.

Since the farm invasions, commercial agricultural output has declined 70 per cent and is still declining. In the communal sector, and this is fascinating, the decline has been slightly higher at 73 per cent. I estimate that out of the 10 000 title deeded farms that were forcibly taken from their owners, 7000 are today vacant, with no people living there, no farm activity of any kind. Hardest hit has been the cattle industry where commercial stocks of 2,7 million head have been reduced to about 700 000 head. You cannot run cattle when there is no law, no security and no fences.

This year we will import just about everything – two thirds of our milk, a third of our sugar (we used to produce 600 000 tonnes a year with half for export), vegetables, 1,2 million tonnes of maize – maybe more than last year as the crop is smaller, all our wheat, half our barley and two thirds of our soybeans. Much of it from Zambia (where ex Zimbabwean farmers have made a huge impact) and Malawi where very successful peasant agricultural systems are delivering large surpluses – but funded by donors.

What should be of concern to all is that three years after the formation of the GNU, the only sector that shows no recovery, but is still in decline, is agriculture.

Eddie

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Absence of white farmers not the reason for Zimbabwe's food shortages



Zimbabwe's food production ability was not destroyed by taking white farms. Commercial farmers were only responsible for producing 30% of Zimbabwe's staple, maize. 70% was produced by communal farmers (villages working on small plots averaging about 6 hectares).

What destroyed Zimbabwe's agricultural productivity was the idiosyncratic economic policies of the Mugabe government. The first was price control. The government decreed the price of agricultural commodities. The second was market restriction. The government decreed that only the government owned Grain Marketing Board could buy maize. In conjunction with this decree they banned the transportation of maize to anywhere other than GMB depots. Thus producing the staple simply became unprofitable and communal farmers simply resorted to producing just enough to feed their families.

The production of maize is very much dependent on annual rainfall patterns. Years with good rains would see bumper harvest enabling the government to put some into reserve stockpiles. Price controls meant that there were several years without reserves being replenished hence the government lost its ability to supplement grain supplies in drought years. Also at play was the monetary mismanagement which wiped out foreign currency reserves. The government was unable to import maize on its own.

The fact that white farmers were chased of their farms was merely a coincidence. In fact this was not even the first time that Zimbabwe had had to import maize for food. In the 1982/83 season there was a serious drought and the government imported yellow maize which was derisively referred to as 'Kenya' by locals. The consistency and taste of sadza (ugali) made from yellow maize is not that same as that from white maize. I do not know for what reason yellow sadza came to be referred to as Kenya.

The food aid that was distributed during that drought came to be commonly referred to as 'chibage chaVaMugabe' (Mugabe's maize). In the subsequent years Zanu-PF became so popular that at one point they won 117 out of the 120 seats in parliament. This is one of the reasons why donors and Western governments are now making a huge effort not to have food aid being associated closely with the government. The fact that this  leads to unnecessary waste and duplication of resources, is ignored.

There was another drought around 1991/92 and the government again had to import maize, this time mainly from SA and Zambia. During both these major food shortages white commercial farmers were in full unhindered operation, yet that did not prevent the weather from playing havoc on food supplies.

As we speak last year (2010/2011 season) the rains were relatively good and we didn't hear anything about food shortages in Zimbabwe. This year the rains have not been so good but some regions of the country have reasonable harvest. Food shortages will hopefully not be serious.

Weather, not the race of farmers, is the chief influence upon food security in Zimbabwe. I grew up among Zimbabwean villagers and the chief worry in terms of food security has always been 'are the rains going to be good this year?' (Mukati nhaka mvura inonaya zvakanaka?)

Of late seasons of low rainfall have become more frequent, and rains are persistently coming late. Thus the other possible reason for Zimbabwe's growing food insecurity is climate change, not the absence of a particular race of farmers.