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On many occasions when a country experiences a food crisis it also becomes vulnerable to foreign machinations through food aid, often used as a political weapon to break resistance to foreign influence by bigger powers.
It was no doubt for the reason of empowering Zimbabweans and protecting them from hunger that the Government introduced land reforms in 2000, provoking the ire of Britain, a former colonial power in Rhodesia and the United States and their European cousins as a result because land was expropriated from whites of European stock in an agrarian revolution that has produced handsome dividends although its detractors will say otherwise.
News of a plan to bring land reform to Bulawayo will have been welcomed by many who realise the importance of food self-sufficiency that can result from urban development complementing food imports from rural areas.
Altogether 87 companies have shut down in Bulawayo — hitherto Zimbabwe’s manufacturing hub — as, a result of various factors including illegal economic sanctions imposed by the West to protest against the land reform programme.
The Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development, Dr Ignatius Chombo said on Monday urban farming especially in Bulawayo would help those who lost their jobs due to the closures of factories in the city while also promoting the agrarian revolution that has seen thousands of landless Zimbabweans enjoying a better life on the land.
But farming is not as simple an activity as it might sound to the uninitiated. It demands capital, knowledge and a resolute dedication to and love of the soil as a source of both food and wealth for oneself and for one’s country.
In Bulawayo, 11 000 hectares of land have been identified which can be used for urban agriculture.
However, some of that land is said to belong to absentee landlords who, no doubt, use it for speculative reasons.
What is required therefore is how to ensure that proper structures are put in place to ensure that whatever land will be finally handed out for urban agriculture is put to good and effective use by beneficiaries.
Such “structures” must ensure that those given the land have or are given, the knowledge to farm and then be supervised in doing the right thing for the benefit of not just their families, but of the country as a whole by growing, say, vegetables among other produce for export.
Apart from being supervisory, the structures in question must ensure the availability of requisite equipment and adequate water supplies since Bulawayo, like the rest of the region, is a dry area.
Irrigation therefore becomes a more viable option with boreholes being sunk in designated farming areas; otherwise urban agriculture as proposed will end up as a pipe dream.
Equally important, is the proper land use to prevent soil erosion as well as judicious use of fertilisers to prevent the contamination of underground water harvested for use by households through boreholes.
But while the Government is genuinely concerned about the welfare of workers who lose their jobs introducing urban farming as a lifeline thrown to these people should never, never become a substitute for a strong manufacturing base that had for years seen Bulawayo as Zimbabwe’s industrial hub.
Whether as a temporary or a permanent feature, urban farming should be promoted only to save as a complement, rather than as a replacement for a strong manufacturing component of Zimbabwe’s economy; otherwise Bulawayo without the many industries might die and become a “ghost city”.
A question continues to linger in this pen’s mind however, as to whether the people of Bulawayo, many of whom have not enthusiastically embraced indigenisation and economic empowerment, not to mention the land reform programme itself, will this time around energetically run with the idea of urban agriculture.
Still, urban farming should be viewed as a means to a future new destiny for the jobless in Zimbabwe’s second largest city, all things being equal.
Perhaps future urban planning in Zimbabwe should also make provision for urban farming since; moreover this country’s economy is agriculturally-based.
Dr Chombo’s statement posits a bigger, perfect picture of urban agriculture in Bulawayo where that activity has in the past been carried out in a haphazard manner with crops slashed by council workers for being grown in wrong places, such as along stream banks.
And if proper structures and systems are put in place they will weed out these unpatriotic Zimbabweans who squat as proxies on land owned by opponents of land reform living abroad so that genuine and conscientious Zimbabweans may work that land instead.
In all cases farmers should tap into the rich expertise of universities and other institutions of higher learning in loco or elsewhere that the agrarian revolution succeeds in its objective of reforming Zimbabwe’s economy concomitantly with the welfare of the citizens of this country.
Online Reporter