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