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Samuel Kadungure
ZIMBABWE can grow millions of jobs, regain its lost status as the bread basket of Africa and create a better future for its hardworking citizenry if agriculture investment and smallholder farmers’ support are enshrined as its top priorities.
Injecting funds in agriculture can positively make a difference in the lives of resource-poor smallholder farmers, as it resultantly raises their income, reduces poverty and enhances food security.
This makes agriculture a priority area of development in Zimbabwe, and hence such a move significantly contributes toward realisation of many other priorities, including poverty eradication, job creation, peace and stability.
Farming Matters was this week forced to digress into the issue of “agriculture investment” – which for long has proved to be the Achilles’ heel of the sector – in light of the National Dialogue on Agro-business, Food and Nutrition Security conference held this week.
The indaba, to be co-hosted by the National Economic Consultative Forum (NECF) and the Zimbabwe Agricultural Society (ZAS) – and running under the theme “Transforming and sustaining agricultural growth in the light of Zim-Asset” – provides an opportunity for stakeholders to formulate recommendations that will boost production and ensure sustainable food security in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is known for its best policy formulation acumen, but very poor at execution.
We hope this is not another talk-show.
Zimbabwe must move from rhetoric to action. As a country we need to retrieve, dust, unbundle and localise regional and local policy documents gathering dust in our offices.
These include the Maputo Declaration (2003) of the African Union, which stated that 10 percent of budgets of member states be dedicated to agriculture and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), guided by the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset).
Zim-Asset is a Government blueprint that will shape economic transformation and development in Zimbabwe for the next five years, spanning October 2013 to December 2018. It has four clusters – Food Security and Nutrition, Social Services and Poverty Eradication, Infrastructure and Utilities and Value Addition and Beneficiation.
“The thrust of the Food Security and Nutrition cluster is to create a self-sufficient and food surplus economy and see Zimbabwe re-merge as the “breadbasket of Southern Africa,” reads part of Zim-Asset, adding that the cluster programmes are aligned to CAADP and the Zimbabwe Agriculture Investment Plan.
CAADP is an Africa-wide framework for revitalising agriculture, food security and nutrition aiming to assist African countries to reach a higher path of economic growth through agricultural-led development.
Under this comprehensive programme, African governments made a commitment to allocate at least 10 percent of their national budgets to the agricultural sector each year.
Ultimately, this ambitious and broad vision for agricultural reform in Africa aspires for an average annual growth rate of 6 percent in agriculture.
So, the National Dialogue on Agro-business, Food and Nutrition Security must come up with viable localised strategies to help Government achieve targets enshrined in these policies.
The dialogue must compel government to allocate sufficient resources to agriculture.
Examples of African countries that have increased their support for agriculture and reaped the rewards abound and include Ghana, whose support averaged 9.1 percent of public spending. It achieved 17 times higher agriculture output per capita and resultantly reduced extreme poverty by 44 percent.
Burkina Faso, also allocated 17 percent of its budget to agriculture (2003-2010), doubling the number of cotton-growing households while cotton-related activities created about 235 000 jobs that benefited nearly 1.8 million people.
So is Ethiopia, whose allocation to agriculture (2003 to 2010) stood at 15.2 percent of the national budget – whose impact trebled extension staff, quadrupled the length of rural road and reduced poverty by 49 percent.
The indaba must scrutinise why Zimbabwe, which attained its independence 34 years ago, and once touted as the “breadbasket of Africa” is in 2014 among those struggling to meet this target. 2014 had been designated as a year of agriculture and food security and Zimbabwe is blighted by food insecurity. This is unacceptable.
So, the indaba, which will be officially opened by acting President Joice Mujuru and is set to be graced by the World Bank Country Manager, Camille Nuamah, must review and revitalise the Maputo Declaration, CAADP and the Zimbabwe Agriculture Investment Plan.
1. Farmers want the indaba to focus on issues like agriculture financing, value addition and revamping of the local livestock value. Discussion must revolve on how the country can adopt a target-based timeline and mechanism for monitoring progress towards reaching the minimum 10 percent budget commitment to agriculture. There is a feeling among farmers that government identifies mechanisms, including budget readjustments and reallocations, to mobilise the extra domestic resources needed for agriculture.
The quality of agriculture spending must be increased taking into account the diversity of small-scale farmers, local needs and production systems – with priority on investments on services tailored for small-scale producers, especially women and youths – such as extension services, knowledge generation, small-scale water harvesting and irrigation, veterinary services, road networks, processing facilities, farmer-to-farmer training and farmer field schools, water storage, storage facilities, community seed banks and inputs.
The Agriculture ministry and the Treasury must be answerable for results.
2. Farmers want the dialogue to come up with ways to eliminate the gender and youth gap in agriculture. This wide and pervasive gender gap in agriculture must be whittled down because it has a bearing on women’s incomes, their children’s opportunities, and the availability of food in their wider communities. Agricultural policies must be attuned to the issues critical to female farmers and support programmes must be designed and implemented to address their needs.
These should include strengthening women’s land rights, promoting productivity of crops grown by women, involving women in research, training and dissemination. Our credit schemes must be reformed to target an increased number of women and youths in farming.
3. The grassroots farmers want the indaba to come up with water-tight modalities to ensure government prioritises research and development and advisory services. Successful countries have channelled at least 4 percent of agriculture budgets to research and development – thereby capacitating extension service providers who are vital in providing and sharing information on ways to improve farm productivity. These services must be driven by an inherent desire to increase food and nutrition security and improve livelihoods.
Additionally, the indaba must devise ways to combat loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, water pollution and workable measures to mitigate the impact of climate change.
4. The indaba must make concrete resolutions on the contentious issue of access to markets for small-scale farmers, investment in small-scale farming, and responsible contract farming investments.
There should be incentives for small-scale farmers, processors and contract farming firms to inject funds in agri-food markets to create well-paying entrepreneurship and employment opportunities for youths and women and access to new markets to sell their crops.
Farmers want reliable access to new markets. Government should also recognise and support the development of irrigation schemes and farming networks to improve small-scale producers negotiating power, as well as clustering them to facilitate economies of scale in input purchase, value-addition, marketing and information sharing.
Finally, the indaba must put in place mechanisms for preventing and managing the recurrent food and nutrition crisis, aware that in the past years, the livelihoods of millions of Zimbabweans have been deteriorating due to recurrent and severe food crises.
Malnutrition has been affecting millions of children with rates close to emergency thresholds putting to the fore the need to implement effective mechanisms for better management and prevention. Nutrition goals must be integrated into our agricultural plans.
Online Reporter