Chaos in agricultural sector set to worsen food shortages

By Lance Guma
20 September 2006

A combination of fresh farm seizures and the withdrawal of free agricultural inputs for new farmers are threatening to prolong the country’s food crisis. The Ministry of Agriculture stopped its free inputs scheme last month saying new farmers needed to take their own initiative. Experts have warned that a complete withdrawal of support spells disaster for future harvests and this is not being helped by a fresh wave of farm evictions. The government says it needs to relocate black farmers who were resettled in conservancies and is taking more farms under its controversial land reform exercise.

The new farmers however are clearly struggling for resources and with most of the inputs now being imported it has been nearly impossible for them to revive the agricultural sector. Fertiliser last week went up by over 100 percent with the manufacturers saying rail prices have gone up 300 percent. Announcements by the Reserve Bank that they had secured a US$490 million loan facility for farmers have also been met with scepticism The new farmers do not have the collateral to use in borrowing money from the banks since their new plots do not come with title deeds.

Attempts by government to fix the price of essential commodities like milk, bread, cement, cooking oil, sugar and fuel have also underlined their ‘fire-fighting’ approach to running the economy. It’s now feared this will also affect the prices that farmers can fetch for their produce. Food stocks meanwhile continue to disappear from the shelves as Zimbabweans bear the brunt of poor government policies.

Renson Gasela a former manager at the Grain Marketing Board says the chaos in the agricultural sector reflected a situation in Zanu PF where the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. While the state security minister Didymus Mutasa was directing fresh farm invasions, Joseph Made in the Agriculture ministry was pulling in a different direction. He believes the argument put forward about relocating people away from conservancies did not hold water because there was enough land for them to be resettled on without taking more farms.