Farm to table to industry
• Chapter summary
Employing 70-80% of the population, agriculture is bound to be the cornerstone of Mozambique’s economy for the foreseeable future. While the country has gone through a series of crises that have damaged many sectors in recent years, the agriculture sector has demonstrated incredible resilience. Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in 2019 brought vast damage to central and northern provinces, which are the main agricultural areas in the country. With international assistance, Mozambique avoided the worst-case scenario of famine, but the resulting food inflation hurt many. The result is that the 2020 harvest looks like a bumper-crop year without a market capable of absorbing the increased supply. Fears are that the next season will be disproportionately low and Mozambique again risks famine.
This is coupled with the impact of COVID-19. Limited access to rural areas and COVID’s timing, which coincided with the end of the harvest, have played in favor of Mozambique’s farmers so far. But there is general uncertainty on how the next season, starting in September, will be affected. Fears are mainly linked to disruption in transport, which will affect access to inputs such as fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides and increase prices.
Looking to the future, there is extensive agreement that the key to the sector’s development is to increase output. Indeed, the region’s demographic growth, coupled with the ongoing process of urbanization, means that the market for agricultural produce and processed food will substantially increase, offering Mozambique a great opportunity to grow and serve the whole region, according to Mhamud Charania, Chairman of MEREC Industries. Increasing production implies a general transition from subsistence agriculture to agro-industry. This mission was incorporated in the mandate of the new Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Celso Correia, creating what many call “Mozambique’s mega-ministry.” Strategies and priorities for the sector have been the focus of our conversations with interviewees for this chapter. Everybody agrees that to increase production, it is necessary to start from the basics. As Custodio Mucavele from the International Fund for Agriculture Development explained, facilitating the supply of seeds and fertilizer will have an exponential effect on increasing output per hectare and enabling smallscale farmers to transform the agricultural sector from the bottom up. After this, mechanization is the next step toward agro-industry. A second priority is financial inclusion for farmers. According to Grant Taylor, CEO of Agriculture Commercial Enterprise, access to credit in rural areas is still rather difficult and expensive, and farmers are not as high-risk as everyone likes to think.
The cornerstone of the development of agri-business is high-value cash crops. The four main cash crops in Mozambique are cotton, tobacco, sugar, and cashew nuts, but there is great potential in bananas, tea, and other plantation crops as well. If the right structures are in place, Mozambique could establish a nationwide model for farmers to get a high return on the cash crop they produce, while still producing what they need for their household’s subsistence according to Jim Henderson from AgDevCo. This would provide a smooth transition from subsistence agriculture to agro-industry, preventing the sector from being cannibalized by big corporations.
Two sub-sectors that were frequently mentioned are fisheries—with prawns leading in terms of exports—and cashew nuts, for which Mozambique used to be the world’s largest producer. Both areas have a huge potential to propel Mozambique as a global supplier. To achieve this, Silvino Martins, Chairman of Condor Group, told us that this requires a nationwide reorganization of the industry combined with a renegotiation of trade agreements. ✖