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Significant
growth in production for new farmers - Interview with Professor
Sam Moyo
Upenyu
Makoni Muchemwa, Kubatana.net
March 11, 2011
View audio file details
Professor
Sam Moyo is the Director of the African
Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS). He has more than 28 years
of research and lecturing experience on rural development issues
with a focus on land
reform, agrarian
change, environmental policy and social movements.
Source www.codesria.org
What
were the conclusions of your study?
The main conclusion is that contrary to the discussion of the Fast
Track Land reform, which was preoccupied with the hitches and problems
of the process of the Land reform as well as focussed on some elements
of corruption, contrary to that we found a much more diverse range
of beneficiaries.
This is very
critical socially as well as economically. The most important finding
is that about 70% of the people who benefited from Land Reform were
people from communal areas although farm workers were not as many
among the beneficiaries. The people from the communal areas were
those who could have been landless or land short or those who could
have been in some petty business or a teacher even. This is very
interesting in terms of the historical meaning of Land Reform. There
are a few people who could be called elites, who might have used
rough methods to benefit. Some of whom may have one or two or larger
farms. That phenomenon exists but in the larger outcome it's
a small phenomenon. I have given a more generous interpretation,
in saying that about 15% of those who benefited may have been elites.
Listen
Why
do you think people were so mobilised around the issue of land reform?
Many people who talk about the problem with the method [of land
reform] never studied what the problem was before. There are many
things, problems that were happening with the economy and in society,
especially in the middle nineties. This generated a social crisis
and this started to foment political instability. Within ZANU PF,
the renegades, the war veterans, before Svosve and all that, they
were rebelling and challenging the leadership. All of these were
political actions in response to grievances relating to the conditions.
And then you had the escalation of trade union strikes in 94, 95
and 96 and civil service strikes, mostly because the wages had declined.
That is the major social crisis, and you had a lot of people who
had been retrenched because of structural adjustment. We had already
seen this, and we had already seen a lot of people going into land
occupations. Agriculture and land is a safety valve for our society.
The bulk of the population in the cities have had a relationship
with the communal areas, which was now being stressed, the land
grievance and landlessness was now increasing, and meanwhile jobs
and incomes in the urban areas were declining. These forces together
mobilised certain groups. They were not mobilised as a national
force but scattered.
Listen
The
land reform programme has been dogged by charges that production,
in particular food production has been greatly affected. For example,
I read recently that two million people are expected to go hungry
this year. To what do you attribute food production deficits?
A big explanation of the production deficits comes from the supply
side of the inputs. In 1998 about 350 million was lent to farmers,
last year only about 7 million was lent to them. In the period up
to now a lot of the new farmers were using their own money, savings,
or some government and input support schemes. You see, so the agrarian
reform aspect of the land reform, which is the institutional change
in terms of financing, and this is why sanctions has been an important
factor in the failure of the system to adapt. Agriculture has always
taken a big part of the financing and credit. If you don't
have loans and so forth and then banks were risk averse, so the
banking system itself changed, then the question became about tenure.
In the last
three years there has been a significant growth in the production
of a number of crops such as tobacco. Last year they produced close
to 70% of the average amount that was produced in the 1990s. Many
new farmers are producing tobacco under contract, and the contractors
are saying that if they had more money they would have produced
more. In the last few years crop production is now hovering between
70 and 80% of production in the 90s. If you take the bulk of the
crops you can see that there is recovery.
You must remember
is that people lie when they say that Zimbabwe was the breadbasket
of SADC. Look at how much Zimbabwe was exporting and importing between
1980 and 1999. We had four major droughts in the 19-year period
between independence and 2000. And two or three years when we had
localised harvest failure. There were seven years where we exported,
two of them we exported something to write home about in terms of
maize, in the others we had a small surplus. In terms of food the
country that was feeding the region was South Africa, not Zimbabwe.
Up to now. Because they use GMO and we don't. Don't
make the mistake of comparing Zimbabwe to South Africa because we
don't use GMO maize, if we were we'd be producing more
than what we do. The comparison that is being made about success
or failure there are many factors are not taken into account. And
the average reader does not look into that.
Listen
What
do you think about the Land Tenure issue?
I think that tenure is an issue but it is not the life and death
issue that it is being made out to be. Production shortfalls have
got nothing to do with tenure, they've got to do with the
inputs and logistics. In the literature we know that it's
possible to argue that some individuals would invest more money
if they had tenure. But the evidence is not conclusive. The performance
right now is not telling us that. Banks in many countries for instance
don't lend on the basis of the title but the record of farming.
Like these guys who are producing tobacco for instance, the guys
who contract them have confidence in them and they're going
back for more. There is a little room to say that tenure might give
more incentive, but that's not what a lot of people are thinking
about. Banks used to give loans without tenure. Even if you go with
your tenure now, banks will still give more consideration to your
record as a farmer. Our new farmers have had five years and they're
now showing their record.
Visit the Kubatana.net
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sheet
Audio File
- Study
findings
Summary:
Language: English
Duration: 1min 53sec
Date: March 11, 2011
File Type: MP3
Size: 1.73MB
- Mobilisation
around land reform
Summary:
Language: English
Duration: 1min 41sec
Date: March 11, 2011
File Type: MP3
Size: 1.55MB
- Food
production
Summary:
Language: English
Duration: 1min 17sec
Date: March 11, 2011
File Type: MP3
Size: 1.2MB
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