Zimvac report dismissed

Elita Chikwati Herald Reporter
A leading British agriculture scholar has dismissed the 2013 Zimbabwe Vulnerable Assessment Committee report which says about 2,2 million Zimbabweans will be food insecure between January 2013 and March 2014, saying the figures were not a reflection of the situation on the ground.

The assessment, which was carried out by the Zimvac also projected that 1,5 million, spread over 300 000 households, people are already food insecure,

British agricultural ecologist Professor Ian Scoones, who has debunked Western attempts to portray the land reform programme as a disaster, poked holes in Zimvac’s 2,2 million figure.

He told the Patriot newspaper that the 2,2 million was a colossal figure that would translate to a lot of food imports. Prof Scoones, who is co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre at Sussex and joint convenor of the IDS-hosted Future Agricultures Consortium in the UK, said each year Zimvac, a coalition of non-governmental organisations, researchers and Government agencies undertakes a major rural livelihood assessment based on a sample of over 10 000 households across the country.

He said the sample is drawn according to the latest ZIMSTAT ‘master sampling frame’, and the resulting data is assumed to be representative of the country as a whole.

“It’s an excellent and important initiative, but it has its deficiencies. The 2,2 million figure is of course a good flag-waving number for the WFP to raise funds, and for the CFU to bash the Government for the land reform, but the actual implications are more complex,” he said.
He said people needed to be cautious with the report because

“First, there’s geography: as the report shows the problems are concentrated in the dry south of the country which experienced the worst season in terms of rainfall and its distribution (p.125-6).

“Second, there is almost certainly (as ever in surveys) an under-reporting of income, and so purchasing power. Since in drought years, market purchases are essential for food entitlements, this is rather crucial.

“Third, the assessment model allows for only limited sales of livestock to compensate for food deficits (households are assumed to retain a minimum of five goats and three cattle,” he said.

Prof Scoones said livestock was precisely the asset in the drier parts of the country that are used in times of drought to exchange for grain, and distress sales are common, and important for food security.

“For all these reasons and more, we should be cautious about the headline statistics, and understand in more detail what happens to whom and where.

“One of the most striking figures in the report is the prediction that 98 percent of rural households nationally will hit a food deficit by next March if only cereal production and stocks were included. This includes those with no food production to speak of, such as farm workers and other rurally-based non-farm households.

“We must be cautious in jumping to conclusions. One big concern I have with recent national surveys is that they have been sampling according to old sample frames set before the land reform,” he said.

Prof Scoones said if the Zimvac survey had used an updated sample with enumeration area allocated proportional to population distribution derived from the 2012 census, this would have included the significant populations, especially in A1 areas, who are – at least according to the data from Masvingo – producing more and doing better than their counterparts in the communal areas, where most of the earlier rural samples are drawn from.

“In our study areas on A1 sites we see between half and two-thirds of the households producing sufficient cereals for the year – not just 2 percent,” he said.

Alexander Kanengoni, deputy editor of the Patriot, said the survey was conducted by the Commercial Farmers Union and non-governmental organisations with an inimical agenda.

Kanengoni said there were some traditional areas that do not produce much food even during the good seasons and people in those particular areas had their own way of sourcing food. Magunje farmer, Mr Tendai Magwegwe said people should not use the figures of maize delivered to the GMB to come up with the number of people who are food insecure.

“It does not mean that if people do not deliver grain to the GMB they do not have grain in their granaries. It is traditional that people only sell excess grain and keep enough for household consumption,” he said.