adminSydney Kawadza Agricultural Focus
Last year in February, I had a chance meeting with Mrs Agnes Kanhanga at Stockwell Farm in Mvurwi, Mashonaland Central Province. She was a beneficiary of Tian Ze Tobacco Company’s contract farming programme and she was looking forward to a fruitful auction season. She was a jolly happy woman who was sure to enjoy the fruits of her labour after a successful season.
This year, however, Mrs Kanhanga phoned saying her tobacco was affected by heavy rains experienced during the 2016-2017 season.
I felt sorry for her because I have, over the years, been quite familiar with the labour and inputs costs one invests during the season, especially in tobacco farming.
Mrs Kanhanga was mourning the loss of her tobacco crop, it seemed, and she had good news for me!
Her good news was yet another successful season, this time through her participation in Government’s Command Agriculture Programme.
I am not going to celebrate this success today! I plan to visit Stockwell Farm in Mvurwi to see with my own eyes what the “Wonder Woman” that is Mrs Kanhanga wants to share with me.
Enough of that! What is my issue here?
We are celebrating as a region the bumper harvest after a successful season.
Zimbabwe, after years of lean seasons, is expecting to harvest more than three million tonnes of grain, while South Africa is looking at 15,7 million tonnes.
That is good news for the SADC region because the countries that produce more have something to share with the region.
However, as we celebrate these milestones, we tend to forget how women have been spearheading agricultural production without getting much recognition for their efforts.
In our celebrations to date, I haven’t heard any day our mothers have been mentioned for contributing to the bumper harvest we are witnessing today.
Literature has it that women have suffered from serious patriarchal practices in society that at the end of the day nothing is said of the heroines who put such effort in producing for our country.
Renowned researcher, the late Sam Moyo and his colleagues writing on “The gender dimension of natural resource management”, noted the contribution of women, rural women in particular, to agricultural production in Zimbabwe.
He states that in rural areas, women are the household members having almost sole responsibility for domestic tasks including fetching firewood and water and for the majority of subsistence agriculture.
“In the absence of developed infrastructure, they are heavily dependent on naturally available soil, water and wood fuel.
“Any depletion or limitation of access to those resources undermines women’s work loads and that further affects their health which is already weakened by poverty.
“For rural women, income generation often depends on exploitation of natural resources for example the sell of fuel wood and the use of land and water for cash cropping.”
This means, Moyo et al argue, that women constantly make decisions about trade-offs between conserving natural resources and exploiting them.
They further argue that women’s labour contribution to peasant agriculture greatly exceeds that of men.
Surveys by Unicef, the Beiger Institute and the then Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs indicate that women perform approximately 70 percent of farm labour mainly ploughing, planting, weeding and harvesting.
The surveys also note that women undertake more than 60 percent of livestock care, with boys also contributing substantially in the sector.
It is further reported that women spend an average of 4-5 hours per day in the fields during low labour demand periods (June to September) and 6-9 hours a day during peak season (October to May).
They note, however, that despite the extent of women’s contribution to agriculture, their work remains largely invisible.
However, women have only recently been recognised as farmers.
Moyo and his colleagues noted that agricultural extension was still more oriented towards men as there were few but increasing numbers of female officers.
They also state that while access to credit facilities, input supplies and marketing mechanisms are limited for all rural farmers, it is particularly so for women despite improvements that have been made since independence.
There is conflicting evidence about the extent to which women may make decisions about agriculture, Moyo and colleagues noted.
They say women in communal areas are the wives of migrant workers, that is, men who have other jobs or work in towns and cities.
They further state that nearly half of the total of women in rural areas are de-facto heads of households and have scope for informal decision making, at least in their husbands’ absence.
That decision making role is revoked and it becomes limited “by the phenomenon of male migrant workers’ weekends decision making reinforced by traditional male dominance and the migrants’ ability to return from their workplaces with cash, tools, seed, and fertilisers.”
The fact that rights to land and access to the means of production are vested in men diminishes women’s influence, Moyo and his colleagues further argue.
We have heard reports of women driven to suicide during marketing seasons when husbands, claiming glory, usually abuse proceeds.
Water, Environment and Climate Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, when she was still Manicaland Governor, noted how men rush to take other wives in days of plenty.
She might have been joking but it is happening and most tobacco growers have had such experiences during the selling season.
These are serious issues that we need, as community, to think about when we celebrate our successes.
Our mothers, sisters, wives and partners need to be celebrated for the contributions they have made to the growth of not only Zimbabwe, but the SADC region as a whole.
For years women have led from the front but not much has been done to celebrate them.
We need to get off the high pedestal and salute our female colleagues for contributing to the economic growth of Zimbabwe.
Feedback: [email protected]
Online Reporter