Our farmers produced a wide variety of products – 8 per cent of Europe’s demand for horticultural products, self-sufficiency in nearly all grains except wheat, we were the largest exporter of beef in Africa and had a thriving pig and poultry sector. We were in fact the third largest producer of flue cured tobacco in the world and one of the largest producers of white maize. We were the second largest cotton producer in Africa.

We also had a sophisticated market system which paid negotiated producer prices out to the farmers, large and small, in 48 hours. Our banks advanced to our farm community nearly US$2 billion every year in farm loans in March and April to finance the next seasons crops. A farm irrigation fund had financed 10 000 dams on farms to support irrigation, and a Cattle Finance scheme funded half a million head of cattle a year, permitting farmers to start producing without any capital.

The industry was supported by a network of Research agencies that bred crop varieties, solved farm problems and provided advice to all farmers throughout the country. The Natural Resources Board supervised farmers and enforced conservation practices that were the most advanced on the Continent. Two farm Colleges produced graduates with a practical grasp of all farm activities and who subsequently made a substantial contribution to agriculture throughout the region.

I am not saying it was perfect, but it worked. We had the lowest cost food in the region, an abundance of everything we might want from our farms and on top of that it had survived a civil war, UN mandated sanctions and was taken over by the new Government intact. It generated a third of all jobs in the country, half its exports, and fed the country. It supported a million farmers and 60 per cent of industry and banking.

By 2008, agricultural output was down by 70 per cent across the board – both communal (tribal) agriculture and the commercial sector. We were importing three quarters of our food and 70 per cent of our population was subsisting on international food aid. Only tobacco survived, supported by the global industry who needed our specific type of tobacco. Employment crashed and with it our industrial economy built on demand from the farm sector. All our banks and other financial institutions were bankrupt, the savings of a 100 years of enterprise were wiped out.

In 2017, the President who had been in power for 37 years stepped down and was replaced by Emmerson Mnagagwa who promised to start putting the country back together. While the wider economy has recovered substantially, agriculture has not and we need to understand what is needed to put it back on its feet.

The structure of the industry has changed substantially – large scale agroindustry now controls about 4 million hectares and is largely concerned with timber, sugar and tobacco. 8 million hectares of former large scale farmland is now settled by A1 and A2 farmers and the Tribal sector now commands about 20 million hectares. In the past year, we produced enough maize for 5 months of consumption, 10 per cent of what we consumed as vegetable oil, cotton production was down to less than 10 per cent of what we had produced in the past.

We had a record tobacco crop, and this helped but it did not compensate for the very poor performance in other key commodities. What is needed to get things moving in this key sector of our economy?

It starts with security; our farmers need to know that they have some form of secure tenure over the land they occupy. In world agriculture free hold tenure only prevails over 18 per cent of arable land, yet that small proportion of land under cultivation produces 80 per cent of global food output. In the former Soviet Union, 3 per cent of land was allocated to household plots and this small allocation produced the great majority of the food needed to feed the Union. The vast collectives were a disaster. In China, under the early Communist regime tens of millions died of starvation.

Tenure is important. It allows farmers to invest with security; it creates value and equity and provides a basis for banks to lend money to farmers for their essential needs. The Government has made the decision to grant title rights but has messed up the process by allowing elements to hijack the process and try to make money out of the formalisation of tenure on farms. That simply will not work.

What we need to do is to grant freehold title to all who farm the land they occupy. We can make a small charge as payment for the land and cover this with a 25 year bond over the property. If we then gave the Agricultural Finance Corporation ownership of these bonds and the responsibility to act as beneficial agents for annual payments by farmers, it would create a financial institution with over US$3 billion in assets and over US$180 million revenue a year. The cost to the farmer would be US$2,5 per hectare per month.

The AFC would then be able to start servicing the needs of the farming community for all purposes – crop finance, purchasing assets, stocking the land with cattle. If we then extended this to the communal areas by recognizing the boundaries of our 35 000 villages and allocating them some sort of self-administered tenure. They could borrow money and invest in their land. Simply granting tenure rights over 32 million hectares of farm land would create secure bankable assets worth many billions.

Then we need to fix our marketing system. The privatisation of Cottco has been a disaster and should be either reversed or dissolved with the private sector taking over. The dairy industry is stable and recovering but still less than a third of what it was. Pig and poultry industries are thriving as 100 per cent  private sector and clearly, whatever the industry is doing with tobacco is working, although I would like to see a return to the auctions. Maize and oilseeds are a disaster and need review. The role of the Grain Marketing Board certainly needs revision.

But above all, we need to fix the banking system that finances agriculture and develop systems that will pay our farmers a decent price and on time. We desperately need a market for farmland which will allow good farmers to acquire sufficient land to operate viably. It is also the only way in which we can give banks the confidence to finance the farmers we have. Clearly, we have to ensure that our farm land remains in Zimbabwean hands but that can easily be achieved by restrictions on title.

The State is paying compensation to the farmers who were displaced by the land reform process, this is not adequate, but it is a major step forward and already over US$1 billion has been paid out. Long way to go but it’s a start. Now we have to fix the problems it left behind.

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