New Marketing Policy Threatens Zimbabwean Maize Farmers' Viability

When the government here announced a policy requiring farmers to sell their grain only to the state-owned Grain Marketing Board at a fixed price, Beauty Sandukwa dutifully delivered her maize.
Sandukwa has worked the land for nearly 20 years. This year, she harvested 42 tonnes of maize from 20 hectares.

But she says the government didn’t keep its end of the bargain. “It’s been four weeks now, but I have not been paid,” she says.

The new policy isn’t the only thing causing Sandukwa’s instability. In 2015, she says she signed up to receive farming supplies through a program called Command Agriculture, which first launched that same year. Under that program, the government dictates the types and volume of crops a farmer will produce, as well as the price at which they will be sold. In exchange, the farmer receives supplies, including seeds and fertilizer.

The government said that the program would help replace imported maize with domestic maize. But farmers said the promised supplies were delivered late, or not at all.

Sandukwa says she received 1 tonne of fertilizer through the Command Agriculture program, the cost of which will be deducted when she sells her maize to the Grain Marketing Board. The problem, she says, is that she doesn’t know what that amount will be.

When she needed additional fertilizer and supplies, she says, the government couldn’t provide them. Now, she buys them herself. “l ended up selling one of my cows to cover the costs,” she says.

The new regulation requiring that farmers sell their maize to the Grain Marketing Board was enacted in June. Under that regulation, farmers are no longer allowed to move more than 250 kilograms (551 pounds) of the crop from one area to another, unless it’s being transported to the Grain Marketing Board.

Rockie Mutenha, the general manager for the Grain Marketing Board, says the regulation is meant to keep maize from being smuggled to other countries, as well as to protect farmers from unscrupulous buyers.

The Grain Marketing Board will use the maize to ensure the nation’s food security, Mutenha says.

For farmers, though, the regulation makes growing maize unaffordable. Seeds, fertilizer and other supplies were purchased using U.S. dollars, which was the gold standard currency in Zimbabwe when the growing season began. But the Zimbabwean government has since issued its own currency, which swings wildly in value.

Mutenha says the Grain Marketing Board has increased its fixed price per tonne from 726 Zimbabwe dollars ($72) to 2,100 Zimbabwe dollars ($208) to account for inflation.

But that’s not adequate, says Antoinette Chigwe, the chief economist at Commercial Farmers Union, a major farmers’ organization. If the government continues to force farmers to sell to the Grain Marketing Board, many will likely abandon farming in upcoming seasons, she says, or break the law.

“They may need to look for more lucrative markets,” Chigwe says.

Full article...

Zimbabwe: 2019 Tobacco Seed Sales Drop 55%

Tobacco seed sales have plummeted 55,2% as Zimbabwean farmers grapple with viability challenges ahead of the 2019/2020 season.

As of July 22, 2019 only 320 kilogrammes had been bought by farmers against 715 kilogrammes purchased during the same period last year.

These seedbeds should have been planted in June, but many growers were not in a good enough financial position to start the process. So, more bad news might be on the way We sincerely hope seed sales and farmers crop preparations improve in the next month,” Zimbabwe Tobacco Association chief executive Rodney Ambrose said.

While farmers were entitled to 50% retention of foreign currency ... the process of withdrawing the hard currency was poorly communicated to them and as a result they resorted to the less valued local currency.

The 50% hard currency tobacco retention is an important income in making tobacco farming viable and re-tooling for the next season.

Poor prices have also posed serious viability challenges for the over 200 000 farmers who grew the crop this season.

Tobacco selling, which commenced in March, is heading towards the end with deliveries now at one million kilogrammes per day from 10 million at the peak of the season in June.

The tobacco crop is a top forex earner and plays a key role in funding the importation of key commodities into the country.

While the season was affected by poor weather, at least 235 million kilogrammes has been delivered so far surpassing the target of 220 million kilogrammes. However, it is well below last year’s output of 253 million kilogrammes, which earned the country about US$1 billion.

Full article...

Zimbabwe: Once Lucrative Cotton Farming Sector Struggles

 ...once attractive returns of 'white gold' crop now a distant memory.

One farmer said government’s failure to come up with a competitive pricing regime supported by favourable agricultural policies had compelled most farmers in his area to switch to growing other crops like maize.

Cotton production in Zimbabwe declined to an all-time low of 32 000 tonnes in 2016 from 84 000 tonnes in 2015, and 143 000 tonnes in 2014 after a decade-long spell of perceived low prices averaging US$0,30 per kilogramme.

Full article...

Zimbawe: Seed Treatment Chemical To Fight Fall Armyworm Infestation

Agrochemical company Syngenta is set to introduce a maize seed variety treated chemically, which is said to protect the developing seed against the pest for several weeks after germination.

A spokseman for a company distributing Syngenta products in Zimbabwe said, "FD is a seed treatment chemical.It will have an effect of protecting the crop against fall armyworm during its early stages. It remains in the plant system for the first four weeks after germination, so you won’t need to spray against FAW during that period.”

He said the seed was undergoing necessary regulatory approvals before it was released on the market. The seed has been introduced in countries such as Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Canada, China, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay and Turkey.

Full article...

Tobacco Prices Go Up In Smoke In Zimbabwe

A sudden drop in the price of tobacco could not have come at a worse time for Zimbabwe. Halfway through the selling season, the price is about 37% lower than in 2018 — at a time when, on its current trajectory, inflation could hit 100% by year-end.

It’s a blow for a country already in dire economic straits. Tobacco is a leading foreign currency earner. It accounted for nearly a fifth of Zimbabwe’s $5.3bn export earnings in 2018, bringing in almost $1bn.

It’s also a large employer: there were about 172,000 growers this year — up from 111,000 for last year’s bumper season — but only about 2,000 grow more than 2ha.

The average price at last count was $1.82/kg, against $2.87/kg a year ago, with little wriggle room. Insiders predict that, at the outside, it could rise by US20c.

The situation will put the screws on producers already under strain. According to tobacco expert and opposition MP Rusty Markham, tobacco is an expensive crop, costing about $12,000/ha to farm.

In the wake of the post-2000 land invasions, the state’s land bank collapsed. Then, as a result of the nationalisation of agricultural land in 2005, commercial banks withdrew from the tobacco market, citing a lack of security to cover loans.

It means that about 80% of tobacco operations are financed in US dollars — mainly from tobacco contractors and merchants in the US, UK and Zimbabwe. Farmers, large and small, are paid in real-time gross settlement dollars (RTGS$) — but they have to repay their funders in US currency, at a crippling rate of about RTGS$5.7/$1. Though they can later claim 50% of their earnings back in US dollars, that process has not always proved easy.

Industry insiders, including Markham, predict the low price will leave top growers in debt. "They will not cover costs — and will therefore not be able to pay back all the money they borrowed from contractors to grow their crop. The [exchange] rate will also hit them hard," he says.

Those in the know doubt that defaulting growers will be closed down ahead of the planting season, as the tobacco merchants and contractors need to ensure continuity of flavour and quality in their products. But there must surely be a limit to that patience.

But part of the problem is the contractors/merchants themselves. The auction system no longer works for the large growers, who produce about 80% of the crop. So they are beholden to merchants — China’s Tian Ze, British American Tobacco through Northern Tobacco, and several other local and international buyers — and the prices they dictate.

t’s unclear what exactly is pushing the price down, but industry speculation points to the US-China trade war, a glut of Zimbabwe’s main flavours on the market, contractors punishing the government for paying growers in RTGS$, and fewer people smoking, including in Asia, the primary export market.

The potential fallout of the price drop does not seem to have sunk in yet. Some speculate that this is because of the glut of other bad news, including electricity load-shedding — 10 hours a day — which will continue at least until the end of the year.

But until the country’s currency woes are resolved, it’s unlikely that the bad news cycle will be arrested.

BusinessLive

Bleak Future For Zimbabwe's Tobacco Farming Sector

by Mthandadzo Nyoni

The future of tobacco farming in Zimbabwe is bleak due to viability challenges, and farmers are calling for an emergency meeting with the regulatory body and government to solve the issues affecting them.

Tobacco, which is Zimbabwe’s second-biggest foreign currency earner after mining, is currently under siege as producers are not given full value for their golden leaf.

Farmers who invested foreign currency to produce the best crop are their counting losses after the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) told them that they were only allowed to retain 50% of their earnings in forex, with the rest paid in a rapidly depreciating local currency..

Farmers needed to retain 100% of their proceeds in order to be able to improve productivity, but the central bank spurned them.


To make matters worse, the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) recently hiked floor-clearing charges, weighing and auction fees, further eating into the earnings of farmers already hard-pressed by depressed prices this season.


In its June 13 report, the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA) said the 2018/19 marketing season had been the most challenging ever for many farmers and early indications were that tobacco production and USD earnings from tobacco would decline this season, unless there was urgent intervention to save the industry that directly employs close to half a million people with two million dependants downstream.

“Many farmers have been unable to clear their US dollar debts and will exit the once attractive industry. Tobacco will, more worryingly, also become a lesser of an important key foreign currency earner, social and employment contributor to the economy,” the report reads in part.

ZTA said high selling charges both on auction and contract floors were a major concern to all farmers as it impacted on viability.

Selling charges vary from US$7,50 to US$9 per bale, settled at the prevailing day’s rate of exchange.

“Just recently, auction floor charges were raised by over 60%, yet farmers’ real returns are on a decline. Farmers already incur other high marketing charges and levies,” the report reads.

On 50% forex retention, ZTA said as the entitlement was based on a farmer first clearing his US$ loans, and in a season with depressed US$ prices against high US$ seasonal borrowings, very few farmers have been in a position to benefit from the retention to date.


“Farmers also need to have generated sufficient RTGS$ (local currency) income from their sales to buy back their entitlement, which again has further reduced the number of farmers benefiting. The process of crediting farmers’ tobacco FCAs with their entitlements is slow,” it said.

“Many farmers are therefore trying to retool, using RTGS$ revenues generated at official exchange rates, at inputs being priced at close to parallel rates, which is an almost impossible task to accomplish.”

“There are minimal surpluses being generated and coupled with the high inflation environment, farmers will have little income once completing their tobacco sales to sustain themselves,” ZTA said.

Last year, tobacco farmers delivered 252 million kg, an all-time record, raking in US$892 million.

Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union director Jeremiah Tevera said farmers were counting their loses and some could scale down their production or pull out from tobacco farming altogether.

“Tobacco farmers are losing out. Quite a number would be making a decision whether to go for it next season or not. All production has been compromised by this environment,” he said.

ZTA said prices on the auction floors had remained fairly static throughout the season at US$1,65/kg, although a price ceiling of US$4,99/kg has been maintained on the floor there has been very little tobacco that has attained this pricing as compared to previous years.

In recent days, ZTA said there had been an improvement in prices, though daily volumes were declining. On contract floors, after a significant weakening of prices to well under US$2 per kg, there has been a welcome improvement, with daily averages above US$2 per kg, as higher quality leaf grades of commercial tobacco come onto the market and firmer prices are being paid for some lower leaf styles.

However, with close to 70% of the national crop sold, this recent improvement in prices has come too late.

As at June 12 2019, ZTA said 171,2 million kilogrammes at an average price of $1,87/kg had been sold after 57 days of trade, a decrease of 11,1 % in volume and a significant 36% decrease in seasonal average price.

Seasonal auction price was down 41%, while seasonal contract price was down 36% when compared to 2018. Auction volumes remained on a decline, accounting for just 13% of the total volume sold to date.

Daily volumes during the month increased significantly with close to 80 million kg sold in the month of May 2019. Daily deliveries in the month of June have dropped on certain days as a large number of small-scale farmers start completing their sales.

It is estimated that by the end of June, close to 190 million kg should have been sold and with farmers estimated to complete sales in mid-August, the national crop size could reach plus or minus 230 million kg.

Tobacco export earnings have been growing over the years from $772,6 million in 2014, rising to $855 million in 2015.

In 2017, tobacco accounted for a quarter of Zimbabwe’s $3,8 billion export earnings. It is also one of the largest employers in the country, where formal employment is scarce, but workers in the sector are classified as working poor.

TIMB is projecting tobacco output of over 260 million kg from 252 million kg obtained last year.

Full article...

Zimbabwe's Tea And Coffee Cultivation On The Rebound

Tea and coffee cultivation are experiencing a revival in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands.

Most farmers have been taking up tobacco, but this year’s crop has been fetching lower prices. In the Eastern Highlands region near the border with Mozambique, coffee and tea growing is becoming profitable once again.

  “Tea production for the six-month period to March 31 improved by 6percent to 1851 tons,” said Paul Spear, the chief executive of horticultural concern Ariston Holdings.

The company said export prices were strong and favourable for its operations. Any company or business operation that generates forex in Zimbabwe is considered better off at a time the local currency has continued to sag. For Ariston, export sales volumes for tea during the review period strengthened by as much as 18percent, giving the company a much needed financial boost. Prices were also massively stronger too. “Average export prices improved by 13 percent,” said Spear.

Coffee is another crop that is starting to recover in the Eastern Highlands area. Farmers in the area have also received a fresh lease of life after Nespresso launched a coffee product from Zimbabwe last month, putting the country’s prospects and advantages back on the global coffee market.

But the Chimanimani and Chipinge areas, where the crops are grown the most, were recently ravaged by Cyclone Idai and farm and irrigation equipment was destroyed. This has not been a deterrent with Ariston, which is also listed on the ZSE currently processing a $1.5million (R22.15m) insurance claim cover for the tea growing infrastructure that was destroyed.

Zimbabwe has a long history of coffee production and was once one of the producers of Africa’s most sought after coffee varieties. Coffee production from Zimbabwe peaked in the late 1980s, but dropped significantly in the early 2000s because of economic hardship and climate shocks as well as land grabs in 2000.

Full article...

Energy Efficient Tobacco Curing Barn Introduced In Zimbabwe

...uses coal, leading to hopes that tobacco farmers will rely less on the use of firewood for tobacco curing, which has caused a massive increase in deforestation in recent years.

Whether small scale tobacco farmers will find purchased coal cheaper than 'free' firewood remains to be seen.


Article...

Zimbabwe Sugarcane Output Up 3rd Year In A Row

Zimbabwe sugar output to reach 500 000 metric tonnes this year, surpassing 2018’s 460 000 tonnes.

The Commercial Sugar Producers Association (CSPA) said members had initially projected to increase production from 95 tonnes per hectare to 97 tonnes but had since reviewed the figure upwards to over 100 tonnes.

Sugar milling company Tongaat Hulett has projected a productivity increase of from 15 tonnes per hectare to 120 tonnes per hectare.

The developments are partly attributed to increased irrigation capacity from full dams, despite the rest of Zimbabwean agriculture suffering from the effects of a crippling 2018/19 drought.

Sugar is second to tobacco in Zimbabwe’s foreign currency earnings from agriculture.

Tongaat Hulett, the South African firm, produces about 80 percent of the total sugar production while 20 percent is produced by private farmers. It produces from its plantations in Hippo Valley and Triangle.

At least 65 percent of the produced sugar is for domestic use while the rest is for export.

Before the land reforms of the year 2000, sugar cane production was a sole preserve for Tongaat Hulett.

CAJ News

Private, government companies to partner in Zimbabwe tomato canning plant

Thee Zimbabwe Independent reports that Schweppes Zimbabwe and the State-owned Agricultural and Rural Development Authority(ARDA) are 'finalising a deal to kick-start a multi-million dollar tomato canning plant at Arda Balu Estate in Umguza district surrounding Bulawayo which has been lying idle,' as well as the revival of another derelict plant in Norton, on the outskirts of the capital city Harare.

The chairman of the ARDA Board is reported to have said Shweppes would provide US$2,2 million in working capital. He said the project would produce tomato paste. Around 70% of the produce will be for the export market while the remainder will cater for the domestic market.

He said the planting of tomatoes by farmers will commence immediately as the authority and Schweppes thrashed out the final details of their agreement. This, he added, will ensure the processing of tomatoes will begin in November this year. 

Previous reports this year have mentioned an expected output of 60 tonnes a day for the 'so-called Zagrinda Project.'

ARDA has dozens of vast farms under its portfolio, most of them under-performing for many years. Despite this, government is reluctant to let go of them given the sensitivity of anything to do with land after the controversial land reform exercise that began a decade an a half ago. Despite the potential of the properties, private investors are wary of partnerships with the Zimbabwean government that involve agricultural land, given the latter's recent notoriety in regards to the expropriation of once white-owned land as part of land reform.

Schweppes Zimbabwe, once a subsidiary of Coca Cola,  is one of the country's leading producers of carbonated and non-carbonated beverages. While the beverages sector has been performing above the average in a depressed Zimbabwean economy of job losses, shrinking incomes and demand, Schweppes and other companies in the sector have recently reported declines in sales. An exploration of regional export opportunities and the diversification represented by the partnership with ARDA on the tomato canning project can be seen as measures to survive Zimbabwe's currently depressed market for most non-essential goods and services.

African Agriculture      

Zimbabwe cotton concern in $30 million loss

Cottco Holdings Limited (Cottco) has registered a $30,2 million loss in the full year to March 31, 2015 from a profit of $14,9 million recorded in the same period last year.

The company’s executive chairman, Douglas Ncube, said the loss included impairments of $11,2 million in respect of trade and other receivables, inventory and inputs receivables.

“Included in last year’s profit is the amount of $37,2 million arising from profit on the disposal of the discontinued operations,” he said. “Group margins have remained low and were compounded by the high producer price paid as a market defense mechanism, a strategy implemented in order to protect market share."

The group also recorded a nine percent decrease in revenue from $42 million to $38,3 million for the period under review.

Cottco, which operates five ginneries in Zimbabwe with an annual processing capacity of 150 000 metric tonnes of seed cotton, is seeking a partner to help it with funding after talks with the China-Africa Development Fund collapsed and as it renegotiates debt payments with lenders.

Trade in its shares on the local bourse, the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, was suspended, after the troubled group, which has been reeling from debts amounting to $41 million since dollarisation in 2009, applied for provisional judicial management to the High Court.

The group managed to reduce the debt after disposing of its shareholding in two subsidiaries, Olivine Industries and SeedCo.

The company has since suspended its application for judicial management and is talking to lenders about reorganising its debt, Cottco said in a document sent to investors in March.


Zimbabwe's cotton output declined from 145 000 tonnes to 135 000, a seven percent slump due to declining international lint prices which went from $0,89 to an average of $0,72 per pound.

Daily News

Zimbabwe farmers' group calls for acceptance of gene-modified seed

The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union has called on the government to drop its long-held opposition to GM seed and cultivation in order ' to increase agricultural output.'

Despite the government's opposition, many maize and soya bean products imported from neighbouring South Africa are on ZImbabwe's store shelves. A significant proportion of those crops grown in South Africa are of the GM variety. It is argued that this effectively obviates much of the government's reasons for keeping the GM ban in force.

How much the adoption of GM seed on its own improve yields will remain as heatedly contentious in Zimbabwe as anywhere else. Zimbabwe's farming problems involve much more complicated factors than the differences between hybrid seed (widely used) and GM seed.

For several years Zimbabwe has experienced deficits of the main staple crop, maize. Yet neighbouring countries Malawi and Zambia, which also officially frown on GM seed and use exclusively hybrid (or farmer-saved) seed have both experienced maize bumper harvests in recent years. Apart from the merits or demerits of GM crops for Zimbabwe, the focus on that one variable as 'the solution' to Zimbabwe's farming woes may be to merely miss the focus on where the real reasons for the country's relatively poor agricultural performance lie.

But the mere call by a senior official of an important farmers' representative group is significant. Until recently
there had been little discussion about GM crops, and the views of opponents in government and in 'civil society' had predominated. That has begun to change quite rapidly in the last year or two.

Amongst the reasons for the government's (or at least the agriculture minister's) continued opposition to GM crops is the standard 'burden of proof-of-their-being-unharmful-to-human-health argument. This is largely neutralized by the fact that any harmful effects to the population are already setting in if large parts of the population are already consuming many products with imported GM maize or soya beans.

The other argument is to protect Zimbabwe's fairly advanced hybrid seed multiplication industry. The country's annual hybrid seed requirement is put at 50,000 tonnes. The seed companies report they currently have stocks in excess of that by 20,000.

But there is no evidence that the seed companies necessarily appreciate their 'protection' from GM seeds by the government. In fact, one head of the (currently hybrid) seed industry has publicly said that they are ready and eager to go into the production of GM seed if and when regulatory approval is given. They do not see hybrid and GM seed production as being mutually exclusive

All these are signs that sooner or later GM crops-farming is coming to Zimbabwe.

African Agriculture

Zimbabwe: who grabbed what land from whom?

Chido Makunike

An astonishing paradigm shift about Zimbabwe's complicated land issue and its much pilloried land reform exercise is slowly beginning to take place in some western circles. One of the most startling turns was the July 20 2012 New York Times article, 'In Zimbabwe Land Takeover, a Golden Lining.'

It was startling because it is rare for a conventional western news outlet, let alone one with the prestige and influence of the New York Times, to look at Zimbabwe's land reform as anything other than 'brutal dictator Robert Mugabe's land grab from innocent, productive white farmers to his corrupt, can't-farm black cronies.'

Since the controversial, messy, often violent Zimbabwean land reform began in 2000, the western narrative of it has rarely strayed from that simple, black/white, good/evil summation.

The NYTime's Lydia Polgreen stunned supporters and opponents of the land reform alike in looking at it from nuanced, non-political Zimbabwean perspectives almost never featured in western media. Certainly there has been a lot of favoritism towards the politically well-connected in the parceling out of land since the farm takeovers, but few in the West have wanted to hear that most of the beneficiary 'new farmers' can hardly be described as 'Mugabe's cronies.' 

Polgreeen based much of her article on how as controversial, messy and problem-plagued as the land redistribution exercise has been, it has also changed the fortunes, prospects and self-regard of hundreds of thousands of black Zimbabweans.

In a comment reflective of the thinking of many Zimbabweans, even those opposed to Mugabe on other issues, in reaction to the land-holding patterns the country found itself with at independence in 1980, Polgreen quotes one new farmer asking rhetorically, "Why should one white man have all this?" he asked, sweeping an arm across the lush, rolling farmland around his fields. "This is Zimbabwe. Black people must come first."

Polgreen also touches on the huge cost to white landholders at which the land reform has been done.

"Now that we are down to less than 200 hectares, there isn’t enough income to support everyone,” said one white farmer to Polgreen, who she said asked not to be identified because he feared seizure of even more land if he spoke out.

This brings out an irony about that last farmer's comment. Much of the long-festering black angst about land, and one of the reasons Mugabe is a hero to many black Africans while being such a monster in the West, is that colonial conquest brought to Africans a similar kind of dispossession to that which the white farmer speaks about.

Charles Taff, president of the once farming-dominant Commercial Farmers Union that represents the remaining white farmers, says, in response to the black gains in tobacco farming, "The tragedy with tobacco is that expansion, if they had the right policies, could have been done in the 1990s in conjunction with the commercial (i.e. white farmers) sector."

Polgreen closes her article with a comment from a land reform researcher whose take is that 'judging the success of land reform by looking at production figures misses a crucial point.'

He says, "No one ever argued that this is a more productive form of farming. But does it share wealth more equitably? Does it give people a sense of dignity and ownership? Those things have value, too."

Predictably, there was a firestorm of reaction to Polgreen's article, much of it outraged at a perceived white-washing of 'Mugabe's land grab.' The New York Times, perhaps in an effort to defend itself for going against the grain of the accepted western thinking on Zimbabwe, felt moved to follow up the article a few days later with a question and answer session between Polgreen and readers.

A day after her article was published, Polgreen twittered, "I'll be taking questions about Zimbabwe's land grab legacy." She didn't spell out whether by 'land grab legacy' she meant the colonial grab from the Africans, or whether she meant the more recent 'Mugabe's land grab.'

Largely in the western media, the latter is considered a terrible wrong against the rule of law and property rights, the former as a long-ago accident of history that is best forgiven and forgotten. Obviously there is a large body of opinion in Zimbabwe and in much of the non-western world that sees the situation differently. What was so shocking about the NYTimes feature was their giving the time of day to these usually unheard non-western perspectives.

 If there are winners in Zimbabwe's land reform, there are also losers, the white farmers being the most obvious example. Although not a major thrust of her article, many previous articles have pointed out that many of the labourers who were employed on previously white-owned farms have become destitute. As a group they may have been experienced farm hands, but were even less equipped than many others to become viable small-scale farmers in their own right.

Then of course there was the major economic hit which the country took as a result of the disruption in its agriculture, which was the base for many other parts of the economy. In that regard it could be said there was no Zimbabwean who remained unaffected by the manner of 'Mugabe's land grab/reform.'  

Most Zimbabweans have moved on to how the wrongs and mistakes of the land reform can now be corrected without the wholesale reversal to the previous status quo that many of the white farmers may have hoped for in the early days. The 'collapsed' Zimbabwe that is still described in much of the western media, much of which finds itself unable to see beyond Mugabe's treatment of white farmers, is fading into distant memory as people grapple with how to get ahead in a still tough economy. Many problems remain and will do so for a long time, but whether the hardships in Zimbabwe are any more than those in many other parts of the world where people get on the best way they can under their circumstances is doubtful.

Certainly Zimbabwe is in many ways a very different country from what it was in 2000. After the 10 year land reform-linked economic crisis that began to lift in about the year 2009, many who were middle class are poorer. But as Polgreen's article tries to show, many who were more or less locked into being low wage workers at the bottom of the economy now have opportunities for self-improvement (based on access to land) they could never have dreamed of before, even with with the difficulties of accessing credit and learning farming on the job. It's a situation of six of one, half a dozen of the other. 

Cathy Buckle is a white Zimbabwean who had her farm expropriated in 'Mugabe's land grab/reform.' She writes regularly about her perspective of how the country is faring.

For historical reasons, their place in society and how they wielded their economic power at the peak of their dominance, there is not very much empathy for the dispossessed white farmers in Zimbabwe. But if there is widespread support for land reform on the basis that white landholding dominance was established on colonially grabbed land, Buckle represents a subset of white farmer who did not neatly fit the colonial land grabber's descendent's stereotype.

As she explains, "I am a Zimbabwean with white skin. I was born, raised, educated and am permanently resident here. For the last twelve years I have been without constitutional rights because I am a white Zimbabwean who also became a farmer a decade after Independence."

"The farm was not an inherited family property, but was purchased on the open market in 1990, ten years after Independence, with the approval of the Zimbabwe government and their Certificate of No Interest. No compensation has been paid for this farm or any of the buildings and improvements on it since it was grabbed."

White farmers who fit into Buckle's category have a special reason to feel aggrieved at their dispossession, and for being lumped into the broad category of 'inheritors of stolen African land.' Naturally and understandably, Buckle is more consumed with her personal injustice than she is interested in the genesis of the whole race-based contestation for land going back a century ago, when the first colonial land grabs began in earnest.

If you're going to talk about 'land grabs' in Zimbabwe, you have to specify which grab you're referring to. There have been several grabs and counter-grabs, and which one seems more justifiable than the other does not depend on any widely agreed sense of what is 'right' or 'just,' but may depend more on who you are.

Who grabbed what land from whom? Whose sense of being wronged and of seeking justice should have the upper hand? Why? 

It's messy, it's complicated. The New York Times stunned many by being bold enough to split from the rest of the western media herd to begin to look at the issue of land in Zimbabwe in its full complexity, causing many of its outraged readers to bust some blood vessels in the process.

If little Zimbabwe's land issues could cause so much heated, emotional reactions amongst the readers of a newspaper all the way in northern America, imagine the gnashing of teeth that will come if and when South Africa's historically similar and also deeply racially charged land issue blows up as pressures build up in that country. The troubles in Zimbabwe and their reverberations, as seen by the spicy reader reactions to Polgreen's New York Times article, will then seem like a mere picnic.  

African Agriculture

Zimbabwe tobacco forecast good, but still shy of record

Zimbabwe's agriculture in general continues to struggle to recover under the vastly changed farming and overall economic environment brought in by radical, controversial land reform that began in 2000. But tobacco is the clear bright spot in the post-land reform picture.

Tobacco cultivation is now in the hands of tens of thousands of mostly small to medium scale black farmers, rather than a smaller number of white large-scale farmers as before. Chinese buyers are significantly more active at the tobacco auctions, although western buyers still play an important role.

In order to be able to take their crop to the handful of auction companies, tobacco growers have to register their intention to cultivate the crop before the start of each season. This requirement makes it possible for the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board to have fairly precise figures of cultivation patterns and possible yields long before harvest.

According to The Herald newspaper, the TIMB says 8,000+kg of tobacco seed have been sold to farmers up to early September, 24% more than the 6,500kg sold during the same period in 2011. 46,431 farmers have registered to grow tobacco during the upcoming 2012/13 season, compared to 19,975 for the same period last year.

The registration cut-off date is October 30, so the numbers could still increase significantly.

The just-ended 2011/12 tobacco marketing season saw 144 million kg of tobacco being sold, a little shy of the target of 150 million kg. Zimbabwe's tobacco record was achieved in 200, when 236 million kg were sold. The worst year was 2008, when hyperinflation and other economic woes were at their worst, and only 48 million kg of tobacco was sold.

Among the attractions of tobacco farming for the many new small-scale farmers who are gravitating towards it are a guaranteed international market that comes to Zimbabwe during auction season, and instant cash payments in hard currency.

African Agriculture 

Why radical, Zimbabwe-style land reform is appealing to some in South Africa

Chido Makunike

The on-going discussion about land reform in South Africa is fascinating to watch. South Africans generally hate to have any parallels drawn between their process and that in their smaller northern neighbor Zimbabwe. But because the historical events and the pressing current imperatives for land reform in the two countries are so similar, the ghost of Zimbabwe inevitably, unavoidably looms large in the shrill, emotional debate.

The prevailing South African orthodoxy about the Zimbabwean government's 'grab' of land from white farmers, as part of correcting the earlier grabs of land from Africans by colonial governments, is that it is a lesson on what South Africa should not do. Not only is this the strongly expressed view by the anxious commercial farmers who are resigned to some kind of change coming, the government has also been at pains to insist that no Zimbabwe-style 'grabs' without compensation are being contemplated.

However, there are some sections of South African society who look at the same picture of the Zimbabwe 'grabs,' along with their agricultural and economic consequences, but come to a different conclusion from the prevailing orthodoxy.

Roughly, that conclusion is that the white farmers in Zimbabwe/South Africa were/are such an economically entrenched and strong group, and that they are also so utterly racist and against change that only radical measures can begin the process of transformation towards a less obviously racialized distribution of land, which everybody says they recognize is a trigger for trouble in the future. According to this view, land reform in South Africa/Zimbabwe has/had to be revolutionary, rather than gentle and evolutionary. And, the argument goes, a revolution is by necessity painful, with the work of getting back to a new, post-revolution
'normal' being long and difficult.

The youth league of the ruling African National Congress (ANCYL) are young hotheads dissatisfied with the
pace and nature of post apartheid/post-1994 change in South Africa. They are also not shy to express their impatience, and their contempt for the senior leadership of their party, who they believe to have 'sold out' and abandoned spearheading the aspirations of the black majority. The ANC Youth League are considered an influential force amongst young South Africans voters, so while the party leadership may be discomforted by its criticisms, it is not an easy matter to shut them up.

For many, the main proof of how ill-advised the recent Zimbabwean land grabs were as a way of correcting
the colonial land grabs of the last century, is 'land reform may have been necessary, but look at how that
country has now gone from regional breadbasket to basket case.' Therefore, 'Mugabe's land grabs' were a disaster and cannot possibly serve as a model for South Africa's even more messy and complicated
historical land issues, the argument goes.

The counterpoint to this, shared by some of the ANCYL's leading hotheads, is that expecting painless land reform is a pipe dream given the entrenched economic interests and holdover apartheid racial attitudes. When they look at Zimbabwe, they acknowledge the wrenching pain of that country's radical mode of land reform, but see that as simply another necessary phase of the long 'struggle' for post-colonial, post-apartheid self assertion.

It is not much use to argue against this view with agricultural and economic data. It is deeply and primarily a political argument, with land reform simply the most attention-grabbing conduit of an issue used by the ANCYL to make the argument. In some ways, the voices for radical land reform and those cautioning for a more 'responsible' land reform might as well be talking in two completely different languages.

'Okay then, if we suppose your crazy analysis of the situation is correct, how do the pro-radical land reform advocates, like those in the ANCYL, excuse the agricultural and economic decline that ensued in
Zimbabwe as a result of its chosen method of land reform? Explain that if you think you're so clever, you bloody, obviously Mugabe apologist.'

They don't excuse it. They simply regard it as having been unavoidable because of the perceived resistance
to any genuine reform, particularly any that caused even the slightest discomfort for the direct or
indirect beneficiaries of the colonial-era land grabs from Africans. The explanation is that the (black) Zimbabweans may undergo a period of hardship as they build a new system of land tenure and agriculture,
but at least they are the drivers of their own reform process now, in a way black South Africans are not yet seen to be by some in the ANCYL. The charge of the hotheads against their leaders is that they have got so comfortable with power and its perks that they have lost the steam to spearhead real change.

When an ANCYL leader said a few weeks ago that Zimbabwe-style 'land grabs' may be necessary and even desirable in South Africa, it was almost certainly not with any expectation that this was a suggestion
that would be widely warmly received. He was probably trying to use this extremely sensitive, emotive issue to provoke and shake people up, which he predictably succeeded in doing. Just as predictably, there was a torrent of condemnation from white farmers' representatives, most of the dominant media and other sectors.

Also predictably, a senior ruling party official had to come out and issue a statement calming frayed nerves by assuring all and sundry that the ANC government had no plans to grab land from anybody. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe dutifully said, “It is not the ANC policy to expropriate land without compensation and personally I don’t think it will work.”

That's fairly clear cut, but it was also striking how he acknowledged the appeal for some of the stance of the young hotheads of his party by saying, “It will not be helpful to engage in violent polemics with the ANC Youth League in the run-up to the ANC policy conference (December 2012). The conference will address land reform in detail.”

Mantashe was careful to dissociate party and government policy from 'land grabs,' but interestingly, he was just as careful to step very gingerly in how he repudiated the explosive youth league leader's statement.

Clearly, this is partly in recognition of the general build up of the perception by some (many?) black South Africans of (1) how little things have changed for them since the end of apartheid and (2) how little group power relations have changed, except for the new black elite having joined 'the good life.'

South Africa and Zimbabwe may both have similarly racialized land issues, but they are very different countries in many ways. It is important to avoid reading too much into the two countries' similarities. However, it is fascinating to see how so far, the progression of the land reform debate in South Africa is very similar to that in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, before 'Mugabe's land grabs' started in earnest in 2000.

Up until then, the same 'international media' that today portrays Mugabe as a supernaturally evil ogre lauded his government for its perceived don't-rock-the-boat moderation and adherence to economic orthodoxy. It was a 'responsible government' then, very much like today's ANC government in South Africa is considered to be and praised/flattered for. But at home, there grew an increasing estrangement over post-independence (1980) 'transformation' between the rulers and many of the ruled, as is happening in South Africa today.

As late as 1995, or perhaps even later, Mugabe's government probably intended to continue with its 'no land grabs' policy. The white farmers who had feared Mugabe's accession to power in 1980 were obviously pleasantly surprised and very relieved that contrary to their fears, there seemed no plans for significant changes in the colonial-era land holding pattern. If anything, they continued to thrive as the 'responsible' new government carried on with various strong support schemes to the farmers, entrenching the country's 'breadbasket' status. All was right with the world.

The white farmers carried on pretty much as before and Mugabe was feted around the world for being the conciliatory Nelson Mandela of his time, when the real Nelson Mandela was then still holed up in an apartheid jail.

But things were not necessarily 'right' for everybody. Beneath the surface gloss of the 'breadbasket' under the then 'responsible' Mugabe government were many old historical, racial, political and economic sores that continued to fester, as well as new complaints added to the mix. Like the South Africa of today.

In the end, the infamous 'Mugabe land grab' did not so much begin because of a deliberate, thought-out policy to reverse the 'responsible' economic, land and agricultural policies of the previous two decades and before. It was arguably more a panicked, opportunistic, populist reaction to long-bubbling social, economic and therefore also political pressures that suddenly burst to the surface, forcing the government's hand towards something radical to appease the volcano.

South African society faces very much similar pressures, with decades and centuries-long feelings about previous land grabs providing a powerful conduit for articulating deep old and new grievances.

How is it all going to work out in South Africa?

It would be foolish to pretend to have a crystal ball into the issue, but in countries with particularly explosive land issues like South Africa and Zimbabwe, what governing politicians wish for, say or don't say may not be the most reliable indicator of what the future holds. If and when the volcano erupts, it is anybody's guess how the politicians will try to prevent the lava from burning them. Being flattered as 'moderate and responsible' by distant media and interest groups may mean nothing when local pressures threaten your very hold on power.

Let's watch and see how things develop in South Africa.

African Agriculture

Zimbabwean seed company targets Nigerian market

Zimbabwe-based Seedco is due to sell its first pack of seed in the Nigerian market during the 2013 — 2014 season.

“Entrance into the Nigerian market will be a game changer in terms of the population size of that country. Its market is bigger than all the markets we operate in, combined,” Seed Co group chief executive officer Morgan Nzwere said.

The company made a  profit after tax of $19 million for the year ended March 31 2012. Revenues for the year went up 20% to $117 million, while sales volumes rose 22% to 67 240 metric tonnes.

Nzwere said during the year under review, an over-supply of seed on the market forced the company to reduce prices by about 10% in Zimbabwe, while devaluation of the kwacha in Malawi also affected its pricing in that market. The new political dispensation in Malawi, according to Nzwere, had brightened business prospects as the new government had promised to continue with the subsidy programme.

The company released eight new varieties in 2012 and was in the process of building a new technology laboratory.

Newsday

South Africa's ruling party's youth league threatens Zimbabwe-style 'land re-grabs'

If you want to cause shock, anger, loathing and trepidation to South Africa's commercial farmers, just say the words 'Zimbabwe land reform.' You will get an emotional earful about it.

South Africa is eager to reassure its farmers and everybody else that it will not go the way of  'brutal-dictator-Mugabe's-land-grab-from-white-farmers-to-his-cronies-which-turned-Zimbabwe-from-regional-breadbasket-to-basket case.'

But the young hotheads in the Youth League of South Africa's ruling Africa National Congress have nevertheless caused a lot of consternation by sometimes expressing admiration for Zimbabwe's controversial land reform, in which land was 'grabbed' without compensation from white farmers. One of several big elephants in the room about land in southern Africa is that it most often ended up in the white farmers hands by virtue of convoluted colonial land grabs from Africans, setting up in motion the present desirability for re-grabs amongst people like the ANCYL, for whom change in favor of the black majority since the end of apartheid in 1994 has been too slow.

ANCYL deputy president Ronald Lamola said, "It was only after a forceful mass action by the people of Zimbabwe that Zanu PF (Robert Mugabe's party) ended up owning up to that role.... It looks like we are going to have that here.”

Lamola said it was expected that white South Africans and investors would flee the country when "militant and aggressive" legislation was implemented. "When the land grab process was starting in Zimbabwe, people ran away," he said. "They are going to leave."

Lamola said that when economic transformation took place in South Africa, some people would experience pain.

National Union of Metalworkers of SA general secretary Irvin Jim said the biggest mistake ever made after the 1994 elections was section 25 of the Constitution (property rights). He said it had served only to protect the wealth of the whites. "Those who control the economy are seriously protected by that section," he said.

He said white capitalists were now relaxed and happy after the expulsion from the ANC of former ANCYL president Julius Malema. "Who is celebrating [Malema's expulsion]? The white people who own this
country," he said.

The immediate controversy around the land reform/land grab (take your pick according to your bias) in Zimbabwe has died down, though still leaving the hard question of how to build a new system of commercial agriculture. Because the apartheid-era repression in South Africa was longer and far more vicious than that experienced in colonial Rhodesia, South Africa currently sits on a much bigger potential powder keg of unresolved land issues than Zimbabwe did/does.

Hopefully South Africa can somehow resolve them without an explosion.

African Agriculture

Rust-resistant Zimbabwean soya bean varieties raise interest in Brazil, US

The dominant narrative in many media about Zimbabwe and farming is that it is the country that went from 'regional breadbasket to basket case.' This is attributed to a controversial land reform exercise that dispossessed the country's once-dominant white farmers and parcelled out the land to (take your pick depending on your point of view) (a) hundreds of thousands of established and aspiring black farmers from whose fore bearers the land had been grabbed a hundred years ago by colonial governments or (b) 'Mugabe's cronies,' who can't tell a pick from a shovel, or a grain of seed from a grain of fertilizer.

All of this is simplistic and incomplete nonsense, but so many people all over find the mere mention of the word 'Zimbabwe' such a blood pressure-raising subject that few are interested in doing anything more than venting their spleen on the issue.

What is not widely known is that part of Zimbabwe's agricultural success invloved a sophisticated research capability, and that portions of it have endured the ten years of general economic and political upheaval from about 2000 to 2010.

The production of soya beans, used in pressing for oil and as an important part of livestock feed, suffered tremendously and is still battling to recover. Nevertheless, research in soya production has produced much sought-after rust-resistant soya bean varieties that have attracted interest as far as Brazil and the US, both countries soya research and production powerhouses, according to Zimbabwe's agriculture minister.

"We are the largest producers of rust-resistant soya bean," Joseph Made boasted at a Harare conference in April. "That material (soya bean) we are now sending to Brazil and the US (is) developed in our own seed houses," he said, while emphasising government's long-held position against the importation of genetically
modified grains.

Despite this success, the many problems still plaguing agriculture mean that the new in-country developed rust-resistant soya varieties have not led to the recovery of Zimbabwe's soya bean self-sufficiency.

The Financial Gazette (20 April 2012) reports that local 'cooking oil processing industries have been spending US$180 million year on imports to make up for Zimbabwe's soya production shortfall.  An industry executive said the country imported 60,000 tonnes of soya seed oil from South Africa annually, valued at US$90 million. 144,000 tonnes of soya meal are also annually imported from India.

''We have the ability of sending US$180 million per year to India and South Africa for these two products; (but) our farmers require US$120 million per year to produce them. Why not give our farmers the money and save US$60 million?" asked the executive.

Banks in Zimbabwe are as chicken about agricultural lending as anywhere else, a fear compounded by the lingering after-effects of the still unresolved discussion over post land reform farm property rights and security of tenure/collateral issues.

African Agriculture

Zambia, Zimbabwe drastically revise maize harvest forecasts downwards

Zambia's production of maize from commercial farmers is this year expected to be as much as 80% less than that of the 2011 harvest, while neighboring Zimbabwe has 'written off' a third of its current maize crop.

Maize is the staple crop of both countries, and its cultivation in both mainly depends on rainfall. The current cropping season's (October-May) rains began late and have been characterized by long dry spells.

Zambia has enjoyed several years of good maize harvests on good rains and an inputs subsidy program for poor farmers. Zimbabwe has been battling for several years to recoup maize self-sufficiency after dramatic declines caused by a radical land reform exercise that started in 2000.

A spokesman for the Zambia National Farmers' Union said maize output by commercial farmers will fall to 60,000 tonnes, compared to 350,000 tonnes reaped in 2011. Projected yield figures for small scale maize farmers are still being complied.

In Zimbabwe, agriculture officials have announced that a third of the 1.689 million hectares put under maize cultivation for the 2011/12 cropping season had been declared a write-off. Production of maize had been rising from its low of 400,000 tonnes in 2007/08, to 1.35 million tonnes in 2010/11, although that was still less than the country's consumption requirement.

With almost all the countries of the sub-region expected to experience reduced harvests and maize deficits in the next several months, the effects of the poor farming season are likely to have wide and deep food security, economic and political consequences.

African Agriculture

Farmer dispossessed in Zimbabwe’s land reform gives his views

Christopher Jarrett had his farm in southern Zimbabwe taken from him in 2002 as part of the ‘fast track’ land reform programme of President Robert Mugabe’s government. The efforts of him and others in his position to find remedy in Zimbabwean and regional courts over the years have not succeeded.

Jarrett gave his views on the controversies surrounding the whole exercise to a delegation of the European Union mission in Zimbabwe that was visiting his region, on January 31 2012.

He starts by summarizing the effects of the expropriations on the country’s economy over most of the first decade of this century.

Then, “We now come to the meat of the matter. How are we going to fix this mess so that the private sector can again fill its core role of generating employment whilst at the same time generating wealth for all?”

Banks have been afraid to lend to old or new, post-reform farmers because of all the continuing uncertainties to do with land tenure. A constitutional amendment made all expropriated farm land property of the State. Successful post-reform applicants for land are given ‘offer letters,’ which can then lead to 99 year leases. However, it is far from clear that the leases can serve as collateral for farming finance, although that is being discussed with banks.

The main basis on which Jarrett argues for the sanctity of the title deeds based system of land tenure is access to agricultural finance. He says, “We must face up to it that neither government nor anyone else has the depth of finance necessary to bankroll annually an agricultural system structurally incapable of funding itself. Commercial agriculture used to fund itself through a robust and powerful banking sector using title to the land as collateral. This funding did not cost the taxpayer anything.”

“Now we have a crass system where very little can be produced except from beneficiaries’ limited own resources. The taxpayer through government is thus obliged to provide finance for inputs, most of which funding is never recovered. Those who benefit from these hand outs have no binding obligation to pay. There is no sanction such as loss of security of tenure lurking in the wings should these so-called “loans” not be repaid. There is no need to repay because there is no effective recourse and this adds to our collective impoverishment as our taxes are wasted.”

Not surprisingly, there is generally a huge gulf in the perspectives of white farmers like Jarrett and many/most black Zimbabweans on many aspects of the origins of the land problem, what caused what to happen, and on the best way forward.

Jarrett accuses the Mugabe government of deliberately denying Zimbabweans security of land tenure through title deeds in order ‘to keep the general population poor, subservient and no threat to the status quo.’

Jarrett’s mentions in passing different, non title-deeds based ‘security of tenure’ systems in other countries he cites favorably. But for Zimbabwe, he makes it clear that he believes a return to the pre-2000 title based system is the only viable option.

Says Jarrett, “We do not just promote and sponsor these conditions (secure and inviolate title to land) in order to restore our own rights, but we believe they should be extended into the communal areas.”

Jarrett argues that once small scale farmers have title deeds, they too will be more easily able to access finance, since their tradable title deeds can be used as collateral, which they do not currently have.

However, it is not clear that lack of collateral is the main reason for lack of smallholder access to finance. In the case of widespread small scale farmer loan defaults, would it be politically realistic in most African countries for banks to conduct mass foreclosures? It is particularly doubtful that this could work in a country with the particularly charged land history of Zimbabwe. It might be a long-established principal and practice for larger scale commercial farmers, but it is doubtful the same model can be transferred wholesale to small scale farmers. This is one reason why in most countries, the modes of financing small scale farmers are fundamentally different from the accepted loan and collateral model of agribusiness.

Jarrett mentions the increasing calls in Zimbabwe for a new system of security of tenure, for the ‘new farmers’ to have confidence to make long-term plans and investments. He does not recognize the legality of the government’ invalidation of the old title deeds of farmers like him. He says that secure tenure for the new farmers “is impossible whilst the owner (like him) still holds ownership and proof thereof in the form of his title deeds. Government is clearly incapable of compensating owners in order to take over their real rights in the land. No one can transfer a right which they do not possess. “

For the government and many Africans, that argument of Jarrett’s is agreed with, but interpreted in a radically different way: that those title deeds sought to whitewash and legitimize the theft of African land in the colonial era. Jarrett means the government does not legally own the land because displaced farmers like him still have their title deeds and were not paid to transfer ownership to that government. On the other hand, the government says the transfer of land from Africans, decades ago under various colonial governments, to what was then designated as title deeds-based ‘European land,’ is the original illegitimate transfer. It is fundamentally a clash of world views.

Says Jarrett, “The point to digest is that the land seizure problem is not going away with the passage of time. It is impossible to confiscate people’s property without fair compensation being paid. There are numerous examples of countries which have tried going down this same route, but there is not one country to our knowledge which has managed to hold on to the spoils.”

Again, it is possible to find agreement on this statement between many ex white farmers like Jarrett and many Africans, but very significant difference on which ‘land seizure problem’ is the more legitimate basis on which to find a base from which to move forward. Is it the seizure of land decades ago by colonial governments from Africans to then consign it to the title deeds-based system of ‘European land?’ Or is it the more recent seizure of white-occupied land from farmers like Jarrett to then re-distribute it to Africans as part of ‘redressing colonial imbalances?’

Jarrett’s only referral to the existence of a raging controversy about this issue is a cryptic, “The Far East, although having different standards of tenure looks forward, not back to their colonial era.”

The suggestion is that colonial land bygones should be bygones. The problem is that many of the Africans in countries with racially charged land issues like Zimbabwe and South Africa see many aspects of the issue from a perspective opposite to that of people like Jarrett. Ironically, Jarrett and other white farmers are for the first time able to partially see things from an African perspective they might have previously ignored or dismissed: that of a person unceremoniously stripped of his livelihood and what he considered his legitimate property.

While Jarrett shows no sign of seeing the other points of view that have resulted in there being the clash of world views that has led to the land problems that Zimbabwe and South Africa in particular face, he does have a suggestion for the way forward:

“Perhaps the best government can do is to mitigate their losses by returning seized land.”

To which that government would reply that it has done precisely that – returning land seized from Africans decades ago back to them.

Clearly the mindset gap between the two perspectives remains huge and perhaps unbridgeable.

Click here for Jarrrett’s full presentation.

African Agriculture