adminreluctance to release money to finance agriculture. The Herald Assistant Editor George Chisoko (GC) caught up with the Minister of Finance Tendai Biti (TB) for his views on financing agriculture.
GC: Why are you reluctant to fund the agriculture sector when you recently conceded in your fiscal review in Parliament that agriculture was on the rebound and that production of both cash and food crops by new farmers was on the rise?
TB: Let us state facts first before anything else here. Government, in partnership with the private sector, has poured into agriculture US$2 billion between February 2009 and October 2011. Of this amount, the Government alone spent US$700 million and already this year, we have put US$250 million into agriculture. In real terms, expenditure on agriculture since the inclusive Government came into being has been at least 40 percent of our total expenditure during the period and at least 13 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.
GC: But the impressive figures you are giving me contrast sharply with events on the ground where your ministry appears to be the stumbling block to agricultural turnaround?
TB: The people who criticise our work at the ministry, especially what we have done for the agricultural sector, do so from the viewpoint of malice and total ignorance. This is so particularly with failed farmers, some of whom masquerade as Cabinet ministers who continue to be called new farmers even after 11 years of the land reform programme. The reality of the situation is that through some destructive policies, Zimbabwe moved from being net exporter of food and agricultural produce to a net importer between 1997 and 2008.
GC: What has that to do with financing farmers and ensuring high production levels?
TB: It is important in that the same people who are attacking me today are the authors of this self-induced position and, trust me, the land reform programme did not cause the collapse of our net food export position but the destructive Government policies.
GC: Minister, what are these destructive policies?
TB: Remember that in 2008, we could not find a bag of maize meal, production of beef had sunk, the country’s dairy herd was totally decimated and we were producing 2 million litres of milk. Wheat production was zero and coffee and tea plantations had become sites of tourism. But in a very short period, agricultural output has massively grown because of the interventions of the inclusive Government. Now maize production is above 1 million tonnes, tobacco is above 134 million kg. There is a quantitative increase in crop and livestock production, save for coffee and tea. The slump in production was not caused by land reform but by destructive policy, as I have alluded earlier.
GC: Can you elaborate further on that?
TB: It is common cause that land reform liberalised the supply of land, and therefore, all things being equal, output should have increased. Instead we have some people who own multiple farms and are mobile phone farmers and a few of them have gone a step back to the era of feudalism – take this farm, destroy it and move to the next one. They cannot tell us about farming.
GC: But minister, farmers need to be financed for us as a nation to get back to our position as a net exporter of food. How critical is it for Government to be actively involved in financing the agricultural sector?
TB: There are fundamental issues, which we need to resolve in agriculture. First, we have to implement the Global Political Agreement and carry out a land audit to legitimise and strengthen the genuine farmers. Unfortunately, the non-genuine farmer in powerful political positions is afraid of the audit, which will expose that they are multiple farm owners. It will further expose the vicious malpractices taking place on the land. There is land that is not being productively used and that is what the audit will expose. Secondly, we can talk about financing agriculture until the cows come home but as long as the farmers do not have securitised long land leases, then let us forget about agriculture beyond subsistence farming.
GC: Don’t you think that as the Government purse holder, you are doing a great disservice to agriculture by not playing ball and making funds available for production?
TB: I am dealing with fundamental issues. The security of tenure is essential and the restoration of the land market is imperative. As long as the land does not have title, it is dead capital, it has no useful and exchange value. More importantly, without security of tenure, farmers cannot borrow money from the banks to finance their operations. Yet the truth of the matter is that without title and private finance, agriculture in Zimbabwe will continue limping and will largely be subsistence.
GC: So how would you want to see farmers being supported?
TB: It is important for our farmers, especially those with large tracts of land under the A2 model and large A1 holdings to appreciate that farming is a business and that like any other business, they need to have business models. I will be blunt with you; there is no Government in the world that can ever finance agriculture in full. To expect the Government of the day, particularly the present GNU, to be able to finance agriculture is fiction. You will recall that we recently unveiled a US$30 million inputs scheme that targets farmers who have delivered grain to the GMB and have not yet been paid for their grain and this is part of the support we provide to farmers.
GC: But, is that kind of support adequate to the requirements of farmers?
TB: There will obviously be few subsidies here and there but we remain obligated to supporting vulnerable farmers and emerging farmers. This group of farmers will access free inputs such as maize seed, fertiliser and sorghum seed from the GMB.
GC: How do you hope to address payment problems at the GMB where farmers take ages to be paid?
TB: We have released money to the GMB to pay farmers and we will continue to do so, depending on the availability of funds.
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