42 years of an evolving agric landscape — 1980 to 2022
FOR 90 years (1890-1980), Zimbabwe’s prime agricultural land was controlled by a few white settler farmers who monopolised core agricultural institutions — research, extension, credit and marketing to chiefly cater for their interests as commercial farmers.
These farmers proceeded to start farmer and commodity associations, develop a political power base and supported agricultural knowledge development through information and research, pricing, marketing and credit policies that directly and indirectly discriminated against black smallholders.
This kind of status quo was to remain in place until 1980 when Zimbabwe secured independence from white dominion and immediately made a strategic political decision to boost maize and cotton production to even the playing field and help smallholders gain easy access to grain and cotton buying depots.
Today the once-marginalised farmers produce a variety of crops that has seen them exploring markets both locally and even externally, thanks to the attainment of independence in 1980.
The majority Government of Zimbabwe came up with several economic blueprints to promote sustainable economic growth and poverty alleviation with the early years of independence characterised by policies aimed at redressing colonial era imbalances through assimilating previously marginalised people into the mainstream economy.
The majority of the people did not have the means and capacity to participate in the economic programmes and Government had to assist them through providing free education and health, job creation and land resettlement.
Later on, the thrust was to wean off the citizens from too much dependence on Government for survival with the economy moving from being tightly controlled to liberalisation, Sibanda, V et al, 2017.
The majority Government also sought to achieve a sustained high rate of economic growth and speedy development to raise incomes and standards of living of all people and expand productive employment of rural people and urban workers.
This was the period during which the land resettlement was initiated on a willing buyer and willing seller basis under the 1981 Land Act.
The Land Acquisition Act of 1985 was pronounced by the Government to intensify the resettlement programme by improving land availability. The act allowed “compulsory acquisition” of under-utilised or abandoned land, albeit still with payment of adequate compensation.
Zimbabwe experienced droughts in the following agricultural seasons — 1983 to 1984, 1986 to 1987, 1991 to 1992 that adversely reduced output for both rural and commercial farmers.
During the 1980s agricultural marketing was dominated by four parastatals, which bought agricultural products from both smallholders and large-scale commercial (LSC) farmers.
The four parastatals were: Grain Marketing Board (GMB), which was responsible for the marketing of white maize, soyabeans, wheat, sunflower seed and coffee (controlled products) plus red sorghum, white sorghum, pearl millet, groundnuts, edible beans and rice (regulated products), Cotton Marketing Board (CMB), Dairy Marketing Board (DMB), which bought milk and butterfat and Cold Storage Commission (CSC), which handled beef and sheep products.
Supervision of the operations of marketing boards was vested with the Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA), which operated through commodity committees and served as a conduit between Government and producer interests in terms of prices.
It also undertook external borrowings, project approval, and other administrative matters on behalf of the marketing boards.
During the 1980s one of the Government’s agricultural policy priorities was to increase the number of smallholders receiving credit from the parastatal Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC).
Loans were provided at subsidised interest rates, Poultona, C et al, 2002.
The land policy statement of 1990 shifted the emphasis towards resettling proven competent farmers and other trained agricultural people so as to maximise the use of land and to increase the number of indigenous people in large-scale commercial farming.
The Government was to later set up the Transitional National Development Plan (TNDP) that sought to achieve social justice and equity and enhanced agricultural production of small-scale communal land farmers.
Hot on its tracks came the First Five-Year National Development Plan (FFYNDP) that saw the emergence of irrigation schemes in rural areas that were introduced and prioritised the development of industries involved in production of agricultural inputs and increased the number of state farms with Government intensifying education of communal farmers in modern agricultural practice.
On the one hand, Government’s pre-Economic Structural Adjustment Programme’s (ESAP) agricultural pricing policy allowed it to announce pre-planting prices before the season’s planting as a way of boosting producer incentives, which helped reduce risk and uncertainty among producers.
The practice enabled farmers to make important decisions based on relative prices.
Pre and post-harvest prices were also set and announced between April and May, which enabled Government to project potential harvests and stocking levels before announcing prices. The practice also made it possible for produce to be sold at similar prices throughout the country with all farmers, even those remotely situated, to enjoy the same benefits with the rest.
The Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) (1991-1995) sought to transform the economy from being heavily regulated to liberalisation.
During ESAP commercialisation was successful on State Enterprises like Dairy Marketing Board, Cotton Marketing Board and Cold Storage Commission, which went on to become prosperous commercial entities.
One important institutional response to the general deregulation of agricultural trade was the establishment, in 1994, of the Zimbabwe Agricultural Commodity Exchange (ZIMACE), a private sector initiative, which brokered trade in all agricultural commodities with the exception of tobacco and horticultural products.
The Zimbabwe Agricultural Policy Framework was built on four pillars that include: the transformation of smallholder agriculture into a full commercial farming system, an average increase in total agricultural output each year that is significantly larger than the increase in population, the full development of physical and social infrastructure in all rural areas throughout the country and the development of fully sustainable farming systems throughout the country that reverse the current environment degradation and soil erosion.
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