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Elias Pacheso
Zimbabwe remains a very diversified economy despite the challenges it faces today. Over the next five weeks we will be focusing on a review of some of the key sectors in the economy starting with Agriculture. All eyes are on the sector as it is not only a major employer but also as a significant contributor to foreign currency earnings and raw materials required in the manufacturing sec-tor.
For many years the country’s agriculture sector was a good model for the rest of Africa.
What happened and the sector has been on the mend or has it?
This is the focus of my article this week. I intend to dig deeper into the current activities in the sector challenges and recom-mendations on how the sector can once again become a significant contributor to economic activity in the country.
To tackle this very wide subject I must start by indicating the importance of each crop in the country and delve deeper into how everything fits together, starting with the biggest contributor to agricultural export earnings — tobacco.
Tobacco growing used to be the preserve of large commercial farmers, but has in recent years become a popular cash crop grown on small pieces of land measuring even between one to two hectares. The industry is growing supported by well-coordinated farming, financing and marketing systems driven by a strong industry body.
If any lesson is to be learnt about driving agriculture transformation, it is that allowing market forces to operate helps to allo-cate resources in an efficient manner. Tobacco farming has proved this by earning over US$800 million every year.
Last year farmers produced 258 million kg of tobacco against 240 million kg recorded in 2018. The role of contract farming in ensuring consistent production in the tobacco sector cannot be underestimated and is encouraging to note that Government has realised that this success factor can be used to revive other sectors too.
Proper incentives must be put in place to encourage and not interfere with working contract farming schemes that produce good results. This gives confidence to funders of such programmes and allows for consistent supply of commodities in the market. The early setting of producer prices is also welcome as the Government announced producer prices for key commodities such as maize and soya beans last week for the 2020/21 marketing season.
The other key earner of foreign currency — cotton has consistently generated in excess of US$100m, but the industry has faced a fair share of challenges until the Government intervened in 2016 by availing inputs for free to farmers. Since then output has been increasing in the sector.
Farmers are expected to deliver 150 000 – 200 00t of cotton under the 2020/21 marketing season. Aside from earning the country foreign currency, the crop also saves the country foreign currency from local sales of ginned seed cotton which produces edible cooking oil.
Soya beans is another important oil bearing crop that has been grown in the country with mixed results. Zimbabwe imports the bulk of her soya bean requirements as the demand for protein and cooking oil remains high. Not enough soya bean is being grown in the country. The country requires about 220 000 metric tonnes of soya bean annually for food, feed and other industrial needs but produces far less than this. In fact, between January to September 2019 the country imported US$6 million worth of soya bean to meet local demand. The country also continues to import wheat.
Turning to the all-important crop — maize, which is a major source of starch in local diets, current shortages are worrying and although they are a result of two successive droughts, must be addressed. The country will continue to import food if it does not put in place measures to boost local production. The country requires up to two million tonnes of maize annually for human and animal consumption.
Looking back, the role played by plantation agriculture for crops such as tea, coffee, citrus, sugar cane has often been underes-timated, yet they were major contributors to foreign currency earnings in the country. In addition, horticulture — flowers, vege-tables and exotic fruits etc have also been downplayed. These are low hanging fruits that must be picked quickly, because the mar-kets are there.
No review of the agricultural sector would be complete without looking at the livestock industry. Zimbabwe’s beef industry was a major export earner during the heydays of CSC. The industry’s structure has changed since then and new private players have taken over.
Reviewing the industry structure with a view to capacitating it and strengthening can turn around the economy. Often, re-sources are wasted trying to work on reviving older less efficient ways of farming.
Once agricultural output is boosted and the country reduces its import of food and other agricultural products, the country will save foreign currency and redeploy it to value adding sectors such as the manufacturing sector and services. Efficient use of farm-land is important and must be emphasised.
Another important factor that has been ignored is productivity on the farmers. The Government should consider putting in place ways of measuring yields and improving them. It is not enough to talk of farm utilisation alone.
For agriculture to contribute to economic growth, players in the sector must focus on ways of improving yields year after year. No economy has ever been transformed without feeding itself and this is the starting point for Zimbabwe.
Finally, when I look at the industry as a whole I see the country recovering on the basis of clear policies and interventions in the agriculture sector.
I am encouraged by the work being done by the Ministry of Agriculture where they are encouraging productivity on the farms as well as ensuring that prices are announced on time. The right sizing of farms is good and sends the right message to farm own-ers who will start putting their farms to good use. The realisation that contract farming is the way to go is also welcome but must be supported by incentives to encourage more resource allocation to contract farming by private players.
Bongani Ndlovu