A new book including APRA Ethiopia research has recently
been published by the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). Advances
in Rice Research and Development in Ethiopia presents the deliberations from
an international conference held in November, 2018 at the EIAR Fogera National
Rice and Training Center. The main objective of the conference was to document
the status, challenges, opportunities and ways forward of a wide range of rice
research and development areas, including genetic improvement, crop management,
pre and post-harvest technologies, processing and utilisation, technology
promotion, seed systems, socioeconomics and, partnership in rice research and
development.
APRA research findings
are presented in the chapters on Rice
Cultivation, Processing, and Marketing in Ethiopia and Rice Commercialisation and Livelihood Pathways of Farmers in Fogera
Plain.
Other contributors to the publication include EIAR, the Japan
International Cooperation Agency’s EthioRice project, the Agricultural Growth
Program, the Mennonite Economic Development Associates project, the International
Rice Research Institute, AfricaRice, and the Agro-Business Induced Growth
programme. The book was co-edited by APRA’s Dawit Alemu, along with Taye
Tadesse, Mulugeta Atnaf, Tilahun Tadesse and Kiyoshi Shiratori.
The EIAR book has been published in advance of a forthcoming high level roundtable, which is being planned by the Ministry of Agriculture and EIAR, in order to inform decision-makers on priority areas of intervention and the revision of Ethiopia’s national rice development strategy (2020 – 2030). The strategy, which aims to increase production, productivity, and quality of locally-produced rice to ensure self-sufficiency in Ethiopia, aims to address the following key challenges:
competition between imported rice and local
production,
a lack of skilled manpower and research
facilities,
poor infrastructure for commercialisation of
rice production,
poor marketing system for domestic production
compared to imported rice, and
limited contribution of commercial rice
production.
The programme for the high level roundtable and agenda for
discussions is being compiled by Dawit Alemu.
Advances in Rice Research and Development in Ethiopia is available to download as a PDF from ResearchGate. For more information on rice development in Fogera, see APRA Working Paper 18: A Historical Analysis of Rice Commercialisation in Ethiopia: the Case of the Fogera Plain. A shorter research brief on the topic is also available here.
Cocoa remains Nigeria’s most important non-oil export commodity. However, in five decades, Nigeria has dropped from the second largest to the fourth largest producer of cocoa in the world, behind Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Indonesia. Nigeria is currently contributing 5 percent of global cocoa output, but with significant scope for expansion. This blog highlights critical areas in need of immediate policy attention that can help boost cocoa production and export in Nigeria.
Cocoa Farmers Association round table conference on cocoa sector repositioning
A government driven
‘Zero Oil Policy’ and cocoa transformation plan in 2016 failed to end the stagnation
of the sector. In response, the new president of Cocoa Farmers Association of
Nigeria, Comrade Adeola Adegoke, initiated a series of Round Table Conferences to
produce grassroots consensus on how the Nigerian cocoa industry can adapt to
changes.
The Ogun State
Conference, held on November 28, 2019,
identified seven major causes of the stagnation of the Nigerian cocoa sector:
Lack of adequate irrigation facilities to complement the new 2-3 year maturing cocoa varieties that Federal and State governments are releasing at highly subsidised prices.
Inadequate access to agrochemicals in terms of quantity and quality.
Insecure tenure for cocoa farmers, who are often migrants from states different from where their farms are located.
Poor quality dry cocoa beans, largely due to poor post-harvest handling and wet cocoa bean fermentation processes.
Low percentage of youth engagement in cocoa plantation establishment and reluctance of older farmers to expand their farm areas to include more cocoa.
Limited access to extension services for cocoa farmers, meaning that sector operators can’t keep track of standard practices in cocoa production and post-harvest handling.
Ageing of cocoa trees together with low planting density.
Cross Section of Invited Guests & Speakers at the Ogun State CFAN Round Table Conference . Left to Right : Mr Oladunjoye, Secretary, All Progressive Congress (APC), Ogun State Chapter; Mr Awoyemi (Representative of Director of Tree Crops, Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture); Prof Adebayo Aromolaran, APRA Nigeria Workstream 1 Country Coordinator; and Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, Adekunle Ajasin University (AAUA) , Comrade Adeola Adegoke, CFAN President ( Standing); Mrs Abosede Ogunleye, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, and APRA Nigeria Advisory Board., MD of Harvestfield (Agrochemicals) Industries Ltd., Mr Martins Awofisayo; and Dr Olabintan Adebowale, CBN
Photo credit: Dare Ogunsusi
Supporting evidence from APRA Nigeria study
Ongoing research on medium scale farming as pathway to agricultural
commercialisation by APRA Nigeria in Ogun State provides some evidence related
to the challenges identified above:
36 percent of medium scale cocoa farmers have access to agrochemicals, and 48 percent of medium-scale cocoa farms in Ogun State are owned by non-natives while 56 percent are “non-owner managed”. This is an indirect indication of tenure insecurity and the limited capacity of farmers to take investment decisions in these cocoa farms.
Cocoa farmers are ageing; the average age of the medium scale cocoa farmer is 51, with only three percent under the age of 35.
Only 18 percent of medium scale cocoa farmers had access to public sector extension services that could have helped to enhance the production of quality cocoa beans.
Cross section of participants at the Ogun State CFAN Round Table Conference Photo credit:Adebayo Aromolaran
Tackling the causes of stagnation: findings from the forum
Several
issues affecting the cocoa industry, and how to address them, were discussed at
the forum. For example, an urgent review of state land use policy was
recommended to better tackle the problem of tenure insecurity.
On farmers’ access to agrochemicals and how to boost it, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) agricultural finance initiative “Anchor Borrowers’ Programme” was highlighted as a method to provide loans to cocoa farmers in order to enhance their ability to purchase agro-chemicals.
Through
this initiative, the Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture is also aiming to boost
youth participation in agriculture, particularly cocoa farming. Over 5000
unemployed youths are already registered under this effort. The CBN has also created
the “University Cocoa Development Initiative”, a revival programme aimed at
producing high yield cocoa seedlings, providing supportive infrastructure and
training new young agro-preneurs in modern cocoa production.
On the issue of low-quality cocoa beans, the panel advised that Common Cocoa Processing Facilities should be established in all the major cocoa producing states of Nigeria to promote standardised fermentation processes. In addition, the forum learned that a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Nigeria Export Promotion Council and Adekunle Ajasin University, in order to enhance the production of quality cocoa beans through cocoa farmers’ training and extension service programmes.
This blog was written by Adebayo Aromolaran (Adekunle Ajasin University (AAUA)), Milu Muyanga, Michigan State University (MSU)), Thomas Jayne (MSU), and Jibayo Oyebade (AAUA)
Cover photo: Early maturing variety cocoa seedlings at the Faculty of Agriculture, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko (AAUA), Nigeria, Cocoa Nursery.
While visiting our research sites in Mkwasine and Hippo Valley in Zimbabwe’s lowveld recently, there was only one topic of conversation among sugar farmers we have been working with in land reform areas: the scandal that has overwhelmed the South African sugar firm, Tongaat Hullett.
This episode has sent shock-waves through South Africa’s corporate sector. The company was delisted from the Johannesburg stock exchange, all those implicated have been removed from their posts, and there are potentially criminal charges pending. Not surprisingly, big questions are being asked about the companies that previously audited Tongaat’s accounts.
Sugar deals: alliances between state and capital
Tongaat Hullett is the owner of Triangle estates and mill and the major stakeholder in Hippo Valley, having bought out Anglo-American’s shares. A total of 640,000 tonnes of sugar can be produced per year from two mills. Since the late 1950s, this has been a strategic contribution to the national economy. Ever since the sugar industry was first established in the lowveld with 100 hectares planted by Murray McDougall in 1937, the companies involved – first MacDougall’s Triangle company, then the Hullett company from 1957 then conglomerate, Tongaat Hullett, later – have been a central part of the lowveld political economy. In the estate museum there are pictures of company executives and colonial governors, prime ministers or presidents from the early colonial era to the present. The state indeed invested substantially in the sugar industry – building dams, creating canals, levelling fields and offering land. The state and sugar capital have always been intimately intertwined in Zimbabwe (see the brief history in our open-access JSAS paper).
This was certainly the case during land reform when deals were struck to protect the core estates from land invasions. Concessions were offered and the white and Mauritian outgrowers were expelled in favour of new A2 farmers, but the main business was protected. By all accounts this was agreed at the highest political level. Since then the company has been cajoled into make further concessions, releasing cane land for those local invaders who felt that they had lost out in the early 2000s, and again recently a major new initiative has been started, opening up new land for outgrower cane, and the settlement of more people.
When we started our work in the sugar growing areas in the early 2000s, soon after land reform, the company executives were dismissive of the resettled farmers. How could they possibly grow cane at the level and quality that the estate does? As our work has shown, they have been surprised. Yield levels are comparable to the estate and the outgrower sector is delivering a significant proportion of the cane. With risk transferred to outgrowers and the company acting as a monopoly buyer, this has worked out well for the estate.
But farmers and the company have not always got along well. The company has monopoly market power and sets the terms (even if these are quite good by regional standards), and the exposure of the level of dodgy accounting by PwC has only acted to enrage farmers. For them, this proves that they are being ripped off, and that the company fat cats are benefiting, while they suffer. Growing sugar is hard, and made harder, especially for those in Mkwasine area operating outside the estate, as water and electricity supply is challenging, given the decline in infrastructure. For them, not only the company, but the state – always seen to be in cahoots – are to blame for their plight.
Plantation life and empire economics
Sugar plantations have always been central to the economics of empire. Linked in some parts of the world to slavery, land expropriation and exploitation, sugar, global capital and colonial states are intimately entwined, as Sydney Mintz has so eloquently written about in Sweetness and Power. Yet plantations also have connotations of modernity and progress, creating order and wealth in marginal areas, and with this gainful employment and an export commodity that boosts national economies.
Being in the lowveld sugar areas you can feel this. The emerald green sugar cane is laid out in neat blocks, and the busy efficiency of the tractors, haulage trucks and mills give a sense of unified purpose. The massive engineering works that have gone into ensuring continuous supplies of water to this otherwise dry land are witness to state commitment, with canals criss-crossing the landscape, and the area dotted with sluices, check-dams and ponds. Meanwhile, the country clubs, the golf courses, the manicured village greens, the cricket creases, the football teams and the schools named after sugar heroes of the lowveld, present a sense of another world, beyond the mayhem of contemporary Zimbabwe. The massive Tongaat billboards on the roads welcome you to an almost sovereign space, beyond the nation, with its own rules and security forces.
Plantation life is often a separate existence, where you are provided for; as long as you commit to the deal with the company you can be housed, educated, medically cared for and provided with a job. The remuneration may be poor and conditions bad, but there is not much else among the dry baobabs of the lowveld.
The outgrowers, begrudging and forever complaining, have by-and-large accepted this incorporation into this company world. Many have done well from sugar, faring considerably better than their counterparts on other A2 farms, and with better deals than other sugar producers in the region (see our JSAS special issue on the political economy of sugar in southern Africa). Learning the ways of sugar, and its seasonal cycles, has taken some doing, and many have diversified to avoid total reliance on one commodity, but our data show significant levels of income from most. And this is much more than the pathetically remunerated government jobs that many retired from.
Yet the accounting scandal has upset this accommodation. People are angry at being ripped off. And dodgy accounting is resurfacing resentments around land politics. Noone is very clear about who actually owns the land that sugar wealth is built on. For land reform areas it is clearly state land as it was expropriated, but the estate as whole does not have clear land titles. It was always an accepted arrangement that the estate provided a strategic industry, valued and supported by the state, and lowveld land was cheap and plentiful. But forensic accounting doesn’t take account of vague agreements struck in the early twentieth century, and the deregistering of land reform land may have opened up a larger can of worms, as land rights and control in the lowveld sugar areas are renegotiated.
Sugar and power
What this episode once again exposes is that sugar and power are intimately linked. The state and sugar capital have worked together across regimes in Zimbabwe, incorporating outgrowers – white, Mauritian and more recently black – in this bigger project. The order of the estate, with its facilities and regimented control – meant that a colonial style status quo could be preserved long into Independence, no matter how loudly outgrower farmers shouted or local politicians agitated.
When updating investors in December, Tongaat Hullett tried to put a brave face on the scandal, suggesting that they’d turned a corner, everything had been rectified, and that all would be OK. There is a prospect that the company will be listed again on the Joburg exchange today. But, in the last months, the accounting scandal has changed the game in Zimbabwe. When dubious corporate accounting and colonial land politics get mixed up, things get messy. With Tongaat bosses allegedly fiddling the books to get bigger bonuses, the fragility of the long-running arrangement between state, capital, outgrowers and local populations has been seriously tested. Farmers are more vocal about their rights and demand a greater share from the company. And estate land, and perhaps other assets, are now being contested in ways that they haven’t been since MacDougall’s planting of the first sugar in 1937. An accounting scandal has created a whole new politics in the lowveld, which is likely to run and run.
It is often said that young, rural Africans aren’t interested in farming. Rather, they want to relocate to urban areas where there is a wider array of social, educational and employment opportunities.
The suggestion is that widespread migration from rural areas is bad for agriculture and the rural economy, bad for rural communities, bad for social stability, and bad for the young people themselves. It is said that many young people who migrate to urban areas struggle with the harsh realities of city life, and end up working in low wage, informal jobs or engaging in risky or illegal activities.
The problem with narratives like these is that they feed an ongoing moral panic around youth migration that plays out at both national and international levels. They also define migration from rural areas as the key problem, and focus research and policy attention on rural youth who, it is assumed, will be migrating as soon as they have the opportunity.
Interrogating the narrative
The reality looks very different. Many millions of rural young people throughout Africa remain in rural areas and build agriculture-inclusive livelihoods.
The Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa study, led by IDS and funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), put these young people who remain in rural areas at centre stage. Specifically, it examines how rural young people in Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire engage with the rural economy, and how they imagine their futures.
Building on the research this short film explores how young people engage with the rural economy in sub-Saharan Africa.
A key insight from the research is that events (for example, the death of a parent, family breakdown, being sent to live with a relative, leaving school early because of the family’s inability to pay school fees, exploitation, getting caught up in war) and the fundamental elements of the human condition (love, commitment, loyalty, kindness, friendship, hard work, resilience, struggle, luck, faith, charity, desperation, jealousy) are extremely important in shaping how young people engage with the rural economy.
Another insight is that one way or another, most young men and women in rural areas engage in agriculture and/or livestock production, as a primary, secondary or tertiary activity. These production activities may be primarily for consumption or primarily for sale, and on their own account or working with or for someone else. However, the field research revealed few examples of youth involvement that aligned with the policy imaginaries of “farming as a business”, engagement with value chains, or innovation-driven farming.
In many situations gaining access to land is not a major hurdle. Young people farm land they access through family and rental markets in quantities sufficient at least to allow them to get started. Family and wider social networks help many gain access to the small amounts of capital required.
Engaging in agriculture (or not) is rarely a once-and-for all, all-or-nothing choice. Rather for many people engagement comes and goes in different forms at different points in the life cycle. For example, many rural children and adolescents, while in school, will help on the family farm and/or engage in small-scale own-account farming in order to help pay school fees. As they get older and move away for school, or for those whose primary work is outside agriculture, many will nevertheless keep a hand in farming. Many will at some point re-engage with agriculture or live in a rural area again.
Another key finding is that in the right setting, and with good luck, hard work and persistence, engagement with the rural economy can allow at least some young people to build a livelihood and begin to accumulate some assets (a house, bicycle, motorcycle, a shop etc). For many, this accumulation is however vulnerable to “hazard” like sickness, accidents, drought and theft.
Finally, there are many rural young people for whom migration is not a central part of their imagined future, although having a foothold (e.g. a house, shop or rental building) in a local town may well be.
Implications
It is now time to move beyond the narratives that have over the last decade driven so much policy and public discourse about Africa’s youth. Millions of young people are actively building livelihoods in rural areas. But while many engage with agriculture, they are not necessarily doing this “as a business”.
Starting with these young people, their current activities and the futures they imagine for themselves is an important first step to improving the effectiveness of both youth-focused and more general rural development policy and programmes.
This blog was written by James Sumberg and first appeared on the Institute for Development Studies website.
The deadline for applying to the JPS 2020 workshop has been extended to 15 MARCH!
Organisers are closely monitoring the #COVID19/#Coronavirus situation. If a change of location is necessary, it will likely move to Cape Town, South Africa
The JPS Writeshop-Workshop aims to improve young researchers’ strategic knowledge about and practical skills on matters related to international journal publication and impact (including choosing journals; building ideas about and framing/writing journal manuscripts, and overall preparation and submission of journal manuscripts; dealing with peer review reports, and so on). It will include sessions on key debates and literature in critical agrarian studies, and concepts in and practice of scholar-activism. The 7-day Writeshop-Workshop will include peer review discussions on participants’ draft journal manuscripts.
After the workshop, participants will be in a better position to frame their work in relation to critical agrarian studies and to think about international journal publications in the long-term, and finalise journal manuscripts in the short term. They will also benefit from being part of an emerging community of young researchers working in critical agrarian studies from a scholar-activist tradition. Several participants would be be invited to submit manuscripts to JPS, and encouraged to submit to other major international journals.
JPS are looking for a maximum of 30-40 workshop participants. They will provide full fellowships (travel and accommodation financial support) for up to 20 researchers. They also encourage externally funded participants. Successful applicants must circulate a draft manuscript (based on their accepted abstract) of 8,000-10,000 words in advance of the Writeshop-Workshop.
Efforts by the Government to reduce food imports, increase food availability
and incomes from agriculture could put more pressure on land use through the growth
of medium/large scale farms, and an expansion in area cultivated by smallholder
farms across Nigeria. This could, in turn, create a situation of unregulated
expansion of cultivable land under “conventional agriculture”, that could potentially
result in:
Decline in the quality of land due to unsustainable land use practices
under conventional agriculture.
Decline in available arable land per capita due to high population
growth rate and increasing urbanisation
Further rise in the
proportion of carbon that causes global warming, from the current 29% from
conventional agriculture.
Thus, resulting in declining factor
productivity and slow growth in agricultural sector output.
Way
forward
In order to avoid this negative medium/long
term consequence of current land use practices in Nigeria under conventional
agriculture, agricultural policy may need to refocus on a new “Regenerative Agricultural
Initiative”. According to Fr. Godfrey Nzamujo, Director Songhai Nigeria
Initiative, Port Novo, this new “regenerative agricultural initiative” must
focus on the reversal of the current process of entropy (degradation) towards a
process of syntropy (regeneration)”.
The system involves setting up our agricultural production system as units of fully
integrated organic agriculture farms based on the principle of “zero waste”
or “waste to wealth”. It is a system that “uses less to achieve more”. The
system uses fewer external inputs, exerting downward pressure on both the
release of harmful carbon into the atmosphere and on unit cost of production.
It replaces the intensive use of external inputs (such as agrochemicals,
inorganic fertiliser, feeds etc.) with internally generated inputs from wastes
which would have otherwise gone to increase environmental degradation.
Furthermore, all waste generated on such a farm is
ploughed back to produce value addition.
The idea behind this Integrated Organic Farm Model is to develop an
agricultural system that is land regenerative, ecologically sustainable and
economically viable.
Benin-Owena River Basin Development Authority (BORBDA) waste water reservoir Photo credit: Adebayo B. Aromolaran
Songhai Model
In 2017, the Honourable
Minister of Water Resources, Engr. Suleiman Adamu, charged all River Basin Development
Authorities in Nigeria to set up at least one Integrated Organic Farm patterned
after the Songhai Model in Porto-Novo, République du Bénin, in each Senatorial District
in Nigeria
On November 21 2019, students and experts of agriculture (research , education, extension) across Edo, Delta, Ekiti and Ondo states were gathered at the Benin-Owena River Basin Development Authority (BORBDA), Edo State for an interactive session on how to use this concept of Integrated Organic Farming to drive a sustainable and inclusive agricultural transformation process. In addition to showcasing the “Songhai Model Integrated Organic Farm”, the meeting sought to explore possibilities for collaboration with stakeholders to facilitate the expansion of the project into other communities within the BORBDA catchment area. APRA was represented at this meeting by the APRA Nigeria WS1 Country Coordinator, Prof Adebayo B. Aromolaran from the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko.
According to the managing Director, Engr Saliu Ahmed, BORBDA, working in partnership with the Songhai Regional Partnership Initiative, has set up a 60-hectare integrated farm in its second phase of development.40 ha is put to cassava cultivation, 5 ha to the production of several well integrated farming activities, while 15 ha is still under fallow.
Beds open for manure application at BORBDA site Photo credit: Adebayo B. Aromolaran
Core Integrated Farm
The 5-ha core integrated farm includes the following units/enterprises: the
market garden unit, piggery unit, brooding unit, growers’ units, layers unit,
poultry unit, aquaculture unit, compost production unit, biogas production
unit, agroforestry unit, cassava processing unit, meat and fish processing
unit, waste water recycling unit. The farm area is supplied
with water through a 50,000 litre overhead tank.
The market garden involves raising vegetable crops (2-3 months maturity)
all year round with a drip irrigation network and includes a compost production
unit where a combination of manure and plant materials are composted for three months.
There is no destruction of vegetation through burning on the farm. All
non-saleable vegetative growth is ploughed back into the farm for mulch,
composting, or biogas. The
agroforestry unit includes cultivation of dwarf, early maturing and high yield
plantain, pawpaw and avocado pear.
The poultry unit consists of a brooding section, growers’ section, and
layers’ section. The specially designed poultry house is lifted on raised legs,
while the watering system is automated and metered to avoid wastage. The 5-hectare
integrated farm also contains 12 concrete ponds for culturing catfish and a
large earthen pond for culturing Tilapia fish: each pond with a capacity for
6000-8000 fingerlings. The piggery unit
has 50 pens with 380 animals – an efficient sanitary environment is maintained due
to cleaning and a sustainable use of manure.
The waste – water reservoir is a concrete structure which receives nutrient-rich
wastewater from both the aquaculture and piggery units. Water hyacinth, later
turned into electricity via biogas, is planted to deodorise the nutrient-rich wastewater
before recycling to crop farms for irrigation. The farm also has a cassava
processing unit with produces various kinds of processed cassava products such
as gari, starch etc. Other facilities on this 5-hectare integrated farmland include
an oil palm processing unit, a slaughterhouse, and a meat/fish processing unit
with 3 smoking kilns.
Grass mulch applied on field at BORBDA site Photo credit: Adebayo B. Aromolaran
Conclusion
The BORBDA integrated organic farm,
being the first of the targeted 118 Songhai Model Integrated Organic Farming outfit
established by the Nigeria Ministry of Water Resources, readily presents an opportunity to drive job creation through
capacity building youths and farmers who are interested in organic agriculture
as a business enterprise. This model farm is a practical demonstration of how
Nigerian, and indeed African agriculture, can mitigate the potential negative
consequences of unregulated expansion in cultivable land under conventional
farming system.
This blog was written by Adebayo B. Aromolaran, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria
Cover photo: Raised poultry cage at BORBDA site Photo credit: Adebayo B. Aromolaran
In doing the research, we heard from 18 business leaders from 14 agri-business companies investing in Africa, both domestic and foreign investors. Here are two examples.
ABJ Farms, Ghana
ABJ Farms (not their real name) in Ghana, produces, processes and markets rice, palm oil, cassava and fruit, primarily for domestic but also some export markets. The CEO says she was motivated by her passion for farming, investing her own savings to start the farm in 2005. Bank loans weren’t an option due to high interest rates and the fact that repayments have to start even before crops are harvested.
The turning point for her business came five years later when, supported through a UKAID project, she received a grant and mentorship to commence processing of her produce and that of the outgrowers (contracted small-scale farmers) the firm works with. Further funding came from business profits, family and other government agencies, and now the business is worth GHS 3.5 million (nearly £500,000), employs over 200 workers and works with 3,000 outgrower farmers. The CEO says they received five years tax exemption available for new agro-processing firms, but this benefit did not motivate her to invest in the way that the financial support did, nor did it compensate for the poor infrastructure in some regions of the country that prevents expansion.
BCA Pulses, Ethiopia
BCA Pulses in Ethiopia (also not their real name) processes and exports pulses from Ethiopia to Europe. Motivated by export market opportunities and suitable land availability, the company was also launched in 2005, with foreign and domestic investment. With capital in 2018 of 30 million Birr (roughly £800,000), their modern plant is located near Addis Ababa. Operating in line with international standards for the food industry, there are 170 permanent and 50 casual employees working there.
However, the plant is often operating at only half its maximum capacity, due to market fluctuations and supply issues. Farmers under contract often fail to deliver products of sufficient quality and uniformity. Although BCA Pulses are aware of tax holidays for investors, they say these incentives do not motivate them since, due to bureaucratic delays, the grace period typically expires before companies can take them up. However, exemptions from taxes levied on imported inputs do help. Domestic costs are high due to logistics and other input costs, affecting the competitiveness of exports. The company says that the lack of finance from banks is another critical challenge, coupled with conflicts over land access.
These are only two of the many stories we heard, but they are fairly typical and illustrate some key lessons which policy-makers at the Investment Summit should bear in mind.
There is no shortage of African and foreign investors
First and foremost, there is already no shortage of companies – both African and foreign – keen to invest in Africa, and in the African food and agriculture sector in particular, because they recognise significant opportunities. However, they often face constraints.
Ineffective tax incentives should be redirected to improve infrastructure
Government support can help overcome constraints, and so influence the pace, scale and socio-economic impacts of investment. However, we heard loud and clear that fiscal (i.e. tax) incentives are not material factors in investment decisions. They rarely compensate for problems in the investment environment, such as lack of infrastructure or political instability, which can be difficult to obtain and often arrive too late. Ineffective fiscal incentives should be scrapped, with resulting tax revenue better redirected, e.g. to address infrastructure gaps in transport, electricity, and irrigation.
Help to navigate regulation should be available to all
Foreign knowledge and technology transfer have a role to play, but the contribution of foreign investment shouldn’t be overestimated, nor the potential of domestic agri-businesses under-rated, including the role of small and medium-sized African entrepreneurs.
Provide loans for agribusiness SMEs
Domestic SMEs are particularly disadvantaged by a lack of access to finance when compared to large domestic or foreign counterparts, who have deeper pockets and can often also access foreign funds. Development partners and financial institutions can boost the scale and pace of investment by providing loans to agribusinesses at appropriate interest rates and terms that allow farmers to start servicing such loans only when they start harvesting crops. The example from Ghana demonstrates what can happen when entrepreneurial farmers and SME agribusiness gain better access to finance. However, public finance will never be enough on its own, so attention needs also to be paid to building more sustainable sources of agricultural finance over the long term.
Skills training and knowledge transfer is vital
Finally, while businesses investing in agro-processing, such as ABJ Farms and BCA Pulses, create vital jobs and offer markets for smallholder produce, skills-upgrading and knowledge transfer for workers and smallholders is also needed or productivity is likely to remain sub-optimal. High worker turnover or the difficulty for smallholder farmers to meet international standards are common challenges.
Better skilled workers and farmers offer both private (for the companies and individuals involved) and public (for society) benefits, but there are substantial costs. Companies are unlikely to bear these costs without clear incentives. So, government or donor support or subsidies for training and organising farmers to achieve quality and scale in production, and for linking them to processors can help. On the other hand, offering large blocks of land at excessively low prices tend to incentivise investment in vertically integrated farms with few local linkages.
The UK-Africa Investment Summit is right to highlight that Africa offers investment opportunities that contribute also to jobs and growth. African governments and their supporters can play a role in backing this investment (both foreign and domestic), but only if these efforts are appropriately designed, well-directed and do not overlook domestic entrepreneurs.
Today the UK Government is hosting the UK-Africa Investment Summit, which aims to promote the UK as a key investment partner for Africa and ‘create new lasting partnerships that will deliver more investment, jobs and growth.’ Researchers at IDS have been looking at the benefits and risks of foreign investment for businesses in Africa, the importance of investing in knowledge sharing as well as financial and technological investments and the vital role of South-South trade and investment.
Underlying the UK-Africa Investment Summit is the growth of South-South trade, the growing investment in Africa from China and India, and the opportunity Brexit provides the UK to negotiate new trade deals. This is a time for the UK to re-evaluate its trade and investment policies and IDS researchers Amrita Saha and Jodie Thorpe answer the question ‘What does a progressive trade policy look like?’.
What does a progressive trade policy look like?
The idea that international trade generates winners and losers is well-established – posing the more challenging question of what can we do about it? It raises significant political and social questions for trade policy at a time when the international trading system faces extreme uncertainties – with decades of imbalances, ongoing shifts and a surge in protectionist barriers. The vision of a truly progressive trade policy however does not imply restricting trade but stimulating trade with a core commitment to the following five principles of inclusion and sustainability.
1.Keep trade policy simple and robust, but recognise the need for flexibility. Accompanying development strategies should ensure that the gains from trade are shared fairly – in ways that protect and enhance livelihoods, create equal outcomes, account for labour standards, and do not violate climate commitments or food security.
2. Have inclusive domestic economic agenda that provides for accountability in trade negotiations, by establishing procedures for transparency and meaningful public participation. Such avenues can ensure meaningful ownership in trade agreements and recognition of where countervailing measures are needed to protect marginalised consumers, workers, or regions.
3. Have mechanisms to address widening inequalities such as those from digital trade by investing in capacities for knowledge transfer that enable sustained learning of new technologies and processes. Government support and development cooperation continue to play a role in meeting such gaps, especially in the Global South.
4. Enabling progressive outcomes cannot rely on trade policy alone. Rather trade policy needs to be better aligned with other aspects of the policy agenda, such as greater support to SMEs and entrepreneurs to be able to grasp new opportunities, including through improved access to finance, and targeted support for those who lose out, such as through appropriate social protection policies.
5. Finally, structured engagement and strengthening partnerships towards aligning trade policies with cooperation and collective action for a global sustainability plan as an imperative rather than an afterthought. At a time when global trade dependencies are shifting, alternative partnerships can play a complementary role in generating business-to-business exchange but go beyond business as usual in creating trade impact for good.
This blog was written by Amrita Saha and first appeared on the Institute of Development Studies website
Just ten days before Brexit is declared, the UK is hosting a major investment summit, attended by the PM, Boris Johnson and an array of royals. There is much hype about the event (check out, #UKAfricaSummit, #InvestinAfrica, for example), with hopeful, win-win-win rhetoric abounding, linked to forging new partnerships for a post-Brexit future. Ghana, it seems, is being given top treatment as a favoured destination, while despite being ‘open for business‘, Zimbabwe seems to have been snubbed.
UK aid policy these days is very much focused on promoting UK trade interests abroad. Whether DFID survives as a separate entity or gets incorporated into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will soon be known; but whatever happens, the UK government has adopted a global business promotion approach for UK firms, on the assumption that this will help meet the SDGs.
I have no objection to private sector investment and trade, but quite whether all such initiatives meet the criteria we assumed were central to UK aid policy is another matter. Indeed, questions have been raised about the allocation of funds to some quite dubious outfits. The linking of aid and trade of course has a history in Britain. Remember the Pergau dam controversy, when aid was used as a sweetener for a deal (in this case for arms)? This scandal of course led to the commitment to untie aid, a separate development department with a cabinet minister and an Act of Parliament specifying how aid must be spent. This consensus on aid since the mid 1990s however is under threat.
Trade and investment can of course help reduce poverty, promote women’s empowerment and be good for children’s rights, as the gloss from DFID suggests, but the opposite may be true too. There are many different business models – and so labour, environmental and rights regimes – with very different outcomes for ‘development’. We’ve been looking at some of these issues over the last few years across a number of projects (in fact all with DFID funding), and there are some important conclusions, relevant to the new UK government’s focus for aid.
The project, Land, Agriculture and Commercial Agriculture in Africa (led by PLAAS), compared three broad types of commercial agricultural investment. These were estates and plantations, medium-scale commercial farms and outgrower schemes. The team worked in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia and looked at each business model in each country, examining the outcomes for land, labour, livelihoods and so on. The cases included investments with some UK-linked companies, including the much-hyped Blue Skies company in Ghana, which packages and exports fruit produced by smallholder outgrowers. There is also the rather bizarre sugar outgrower scheme in Zambia, operated by Illovo, now largely owned by British Foods, whereby smallholders’ land is incorporated into an estate, and they are paid revenues for the use of land. The full set of publications was produced as a special Forum in the Journal of Peasant Studies, with an overview, and papers on Ghana, Kenya and Zambia.
Our findings showed that the ‘terms of incorporation’ into business arrangements really mattered. Too often estates/plantations operated as ‘enclaves’ separated from the local community, possibly providing employment opportunities, but frequently with poor conditions. Those investments that had substantial linkage effects included those with smallholder-led outgrower arrangements, where leverage over terms was effective. Meanwhile, consolidated medium scale farms potentially had positive spillover effects into neighbouring communities through labour, technology and skill sharing linkages.
A decade ago, at the height of Africa’s land rush, many such investments were deemed to be ‘land grabs’, but our work as part of the Future Agricultures Consortium argued for a more nuanced assessment of what works for who. Not all investments are bad, but not all are good either. Linking investment to the FAO’s ‘Voluntary Guidelines’ is essential, as this allows investors, governments and recipient communities to make balanced appraisals, avoiding investment riding roughshod over local land rights and livelihoods. Our review of the Guidelines for the LEGEND programme, highlights what is needed.
Another project, part of the Agricultural Policy in Africa (APRA) programme, has focused on agricultural investment corridors in Kenya (LAPSSET), Tanzania (SAGCOT) and Mozambique (Beira and Nacala). Alongside Chinese, Brazilian and other investors, UK investments are evident in all sites, notably through support from AgDevCo and UKAID in the Beira corridor (although many initiatives have been affected by Cyclone Idai during 2019).
Again, our findings highlight the design of corridor investments, and the importance of facilitating a ‘networked’ approach, with multiple linkages from the core investments (usually around infrastructure, large estates and mining) to the wider hinterland. Too often extractive ‘tunnel’ designs emerge, with limited impacts on wider development.
Our conclusions are reflected in AGRA’s excellent 2019 report produced by Tom Reardon and colleagues, focusing on the ‘hidden middle’. This argues that private sector investment that has the most impact is usually small, often informal, and deeply linked into local economies. Clusters are usually spontaneous, not planned as part of grand corridor or investment hub schemes. And when you look, the link between the vast number of smallholder producers and consumers is increasingly filled with many entrepreneurial private sector actors working in transport, processing, logistics and so on.
These private sector players are not ‘missing’, as is often assumed, but instead ‘hidden’ from view. The focus on ‘investment’ and ‘private sector’ (as in the trade summit) usually emphasises large, formal operations, branded as UK plc. But it is the smaller, local outfits that are driving change in African agricultural value chains, and in need of support and investment. Will the focus of the UK Africa investment summit be on supporting such smaller initiatives with the real potential for transformation, and developmental gains? From what I have seen, I somehow doubt it.
As the UK scrambles to compensate for the errors of committing to Brexit, holding the UK government to account in respect of its aid spend focused on support UK-led investment in Africa will be crucial, lest business imperatives override development goals, and larger UK investors get the upper hand, crowding out (hidden) local alternatives.
Investing is certainly possible in ways where the ‘terms of incorporation’ for local people and the ‘linkage effects’ for local economies are positive, and where land rights are protected in line with internationally-agreed guidelines. But it does require a sophisticated approach that goes beyond the promotional gloss and the hype of international trade fairs.
There’s plenty of good research on the implications of trade and investment on development in Africa, including that commissioned by DFID. Let’s hope the arm of the UK government that is promoting trade and hosting presidents from across Africa in London this week makes use of it.
Policy makers are well informed. They understand upcoming challenges, the results they aim towards. They want evidence and examples of what does and doesn’t work. Unpopular policies lose votes so they need tested solutions that will deliver progress. However, policy can fall into the trap of not having clear delivery mechanisms, so evidence on issues around implementation of policy can be more useful than further analysis of a problem. Research should provide evidence based support to identify implementation best practices and provide guidance on mechanisms that provide solutions. In multi-party politics, manifestos are a powerful statement of intent that create opportunities for evidence that provides insights on how to effectively deliver on these promises.
Find a ‘hook’ to get traction
Understand your network and the key players and familiarise yourself with their priorities and drivers. Messages need to be clear and compelling and resonate with the existing institutional narrative if they are to gain traction across different teams and organisational structures. Evidence needs to highlight an issue, then provide insights over what can be done to bring about change. For example, DFID wants to know how it should invest to deliver results – there has to be a poverty reduction angle. The question is whether commercial agriculture is the best investment to make people more resilient, and what are the effects on poverty alleviation. For the AU, their mandate is to implement and coordinate policy. Therefore, using organisational language can make it easier to demonstrate how evidence aligns with the organisational mandate.
Ask the right questions
Engage with potential users before conducting research in order to understand their demand for evidence. Research that is not relevant to the agenda is often redundant. A co-generated research agenda that identifies specific questions to answer can build a stronger sense of engagement and ownership of results. This helps to ensure that research is useful, increasing its effectiveness and impact. Although, there is also a risk with demand-driven research that the evidence will challenge interests and established programmes.
From left to right: Susanna Cartmell-Thorp (WRENmedia), Kiyoshi Shiratori (JICA), Miltone Ayieko (Tegemeo Institute) Photo credit: CABE AFRICA
Make policy makers aware that you (and
your research) exist
Reach out to policy makers and build awareness for potential engagement as the policy context evolves. Be persistent but brief. Policy briefs often end up on the policy desk, not in a minister’s hands. A minister will be attracted to a concise piece of information. Press coverage can be a much better way to get your research noticed – short but frequent pieces in the media will help to generate interest in your topic and lead to greater attention to detailed aspects.
Target the right messages to the right
people
There are multiple levels to the policy making process and evidence needs to packaged and presented differently for political, managerial and technical teams – achieving the right format will depend on who the information is aimed at. This takes time and might mean having multiple briefs for different audiences. Clarify who you are trying to reach and specify what their agenda and priorities are as well as who they will need to convince to action your recommendations. Ensure that your recommendations are precise – a minister will struggle to engage with a policy brief containing 15-20 recommendations so tailor your recommendations accordingly.
Field practitioners and other researchers may be more interested in the detail and provide a more conducive environment to discuss the technical aspects of research findings but these conversations are far less effective at attracting the attention of policy makers.
Understand how the system works
Understand the connections between key players at different levels, and the instruments and mechanisms through which they converse. For example, South African Actuaries Development Programme’s (SAADP) relationship with national governments, or how CAADP creates a point of convergence. Research products should differentiate between national and regional level, as well as the multiple different levels in government. It should design delivery mechanisms for research and evidence to engage at different levels of policy making.
Invest in networks, not individuals
The relevant contacts in development agencies frequently change, so researchers need to engage with a broader network. Even when research is relevant, that might not lead to uptake due to other organisational factors and dynamics. A donor may provide funding for research, but they are not necessarily going to implement the findings. However there may be interest from other donors so it is important to branch out among several contacts.
Know your constituent base
Researchers can’t influence policy alone. Nor might they be suitable for advocacy work- getting the format right will depend on who the information is meant for. Therefore, seek well-connected champions who can assist with reaching and influencing decision makers. Different groups such as Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and farmers’ organisations have their own structures and mechanisms to engage with policy makers. Ask how your research is relevant to their agendas and advocacy processes. Ideas and products need to be conveyed in a way that they can understand. Building ownership across different groups so that they can own a message can also increase your leverage. This may involve co-branding of outputs and events.
Know yourself and make yourself known
Research programmes need a clear identity and strategy to engage with policy and other institutions to give credibility to emerging messages. Gaining visibility and validity at the regional level requires stepping out of the scientific world. It is important to take advantage of existing networks and build a presence with organisations with a mandate to formulate policy to create a critical mass around your research agenda. Share messages with confidence, persistence and passion to create awareness and a sustained visibility.
This blog was written by Louise Clark from the Institute of Development Studies.
Cover image (from left to right): Dr Janet Edeme (AU), Howard Standen (DFID), Martin Muchero (independent consultant) and Audax Rukonge (ANSAF)
This paper revisits the inverse farm size-productivity relationship in Kenya. The study makes two contributions. First, the relationship is examined over a much wider range of farm sizes than most studies, which is particularly relevant in Africa given the recent rise of medium- and large-scale farms. Second, we test the inverse relationship hypothesis using three different measures of productivity including profits per hectare and total factor productivity, which are arguably more meaningful than standard measures of productivity such as yield or gross output per hectare. We find a U-shaped relationship between farm size and all three measures of farm productivity. The inverse relationship hypothesis holds on farms between zero and 3 hectares. The relationship between farm size and productivity is relatively flat between 3 and 5 hectares. A strong positive relationship between farm size and productivity emerges within the 5 to 70 hectare range of farm sizes. Across virtually all measures of productivity, farms between 20 and 70 hectares are found to be substantially more productive than farms under 5 hectares. When the analysis is confined to fields cultivated to maize (Kenya’s main food crop) the productivity advantage of relatively large farms stems at least partially from differences in technical choice related to mechanization, which substantially reduces labor input per hectare, and from input use intensity.
The
underlying causes of the ethnic and religious conflicts in Ethiopia have had
little space for discourse. This blog [1] is
aimed at reminding academics, researchers, extension workers and other
development practitioners not to be distracted by the on-going events and to continue
to foster dialogue around agricultural and rural development issues.[2]
Rural transformation in Ethiopia
The classic model of rural transformation is the
movement of labour and capital from the low marginal productivity sector
(agriculture) to high marginal productivity sectors (manufacturing and
industry). However, the agriculture sector in Ethiopia has not reached levels
of productivity that warrant a mass exodus of rural labour from agriculture to
manufacturing, industry and service sectors. In any case, the manufacturing/industry
sectors are not large enough to absorb the 2-3 million job seekers each year. They
also entirely depend on inputs from agriculture (leather, textile, food
processing) which calls for increased investment in agriculture.
Furthermore, over 80% of Ethiopians live in rural
areas and rely on agriculture for their livelihood, allowing considerable scope
for job creation in rural Ethiopia along the agriculture and non-agriculture
value chains. Therefore, it is too early to re-direct resources from
agriculture, as suggested by some promoters
of urbanisation.
In 2009, the government of Ethiopia commissioned a review
of the sector which identified systemic bottlenecks and recommended the
establishment of the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) with a mandate to
support
Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) to lead transformation of the sector. ATA has recorded
notable achievements. First, it implemented a nationwide soil
mapping project that identified nutrient gaps
of the soil and led to a major shift from blanket application of urea and diammonium
phosphate (DAP) to local fertiliser blending of the most suitable fertilisers
for the soil type. Second, it implemented row
planting techniques for
indigenous crops such as Teff which
is adopted by over 3 million farmers. Third, it introduced Agricultural Commercialisation
Clusters. The agency
also developed strategies for various sub-sectors such as cooperatives,
agricultural mechanisation, rural finance, and seeds.
However, according
to Zewdie, et.al (2014)[3];
Diriba
and Man (2019), ATA has moved away from its mandate of supporting to
direct implementation of projects such as those previously listed. This has
become the source of discontent among stakeholders in the sector most notably
MoA. They argued that transformation is beyond a single agency mandate and the reform
of MoA should have been given a priority. Hence, the need for building a “bigger
tent” for transforming agriculture.
Connectivity and energy are critical to rural
transformation. Connectivity is being improved through infrastructure
development (one of five pro-poor sectors along with agriculture, education,
health and water). However, the rural sector lags behind in the energy sector, even
with continued investment in hydroelectric dams, wind and solar energy. Rural access
to electricity is 26.5% but access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking is
only 3.51%. This is despite the wide range of energy
options available, such as hydropower, solar, biomass, wind, geothermal
and fossil fuels. In terms of access to ICT,
only 50% of Ethiopians have access to mobile telephone and 15.4% to internet
access.
The government has used public resources to build
more than 20 industrial parks and invited both foreign and local investors to
rent sheds to produce textile, leather and other products, offering loans of up
to 80% of the required capital. The majority are engaged in textile with
imported cotton.
Indicators
for rural transformation
It is misleading to use the decline in the share of agriculture
in GDP as indicator of transformation. Agriculture has not yet reached a point
where labour productivity is so high that additional labour is not welcome. In
a series of regional consultations for Future Agricultures Consortium (2006-2007),
it was found that agriculture labour was under considerable pressure from ageing,
chronic and acute diseases, and under-nutrition. Expansion of education also offered
other options outside of agriculture, thereby contributing to labour
constraints. Since the manufacturing sector is not sufficiently developed to
absorb migrating labour, focus should be on creating rural jobs (both on and
off-farm) for the emerging young workforce.
Therefore, I would argue that the right indicators
of rural transformation include, but is not limited to (i) increased
labour/land productivity to compensate for the loss of labour and land to other
sectors; (ii) reduced dependence on rain and ability to withstand shocks
(drought, market volatility); (iii) increased use of modern techniques and
ideas relevant to the scale of farm; (iv) climate smart and gender sensitive
agriculture; (v) ability to respond to market incentives; (vi) access to basic
services (WASH, electricity, finance, insurance); (vii) high level of adult
literacy; and (viii) independent farmers’ organisations that can stand for
farmers’ rights.
Concluding remarks
Agriculture has not yet reached its full potential and should continue to be at the centre of investment and job creation. Some think tanks are advising donors to divert investment from agriculture to urbanisation – this is a very dangerous prospect. Instead, the investment climate in agriculture needs to improve and include regulatory frameworks that prevent investors from abandoning the farms after damaging the environment and abusing the fiscal incentives that they have been given. Agriculture transformation should be pursued, not just from a single-agency perspective but in a coordinated manner which includes agriculture, water, energy, education, health/nutrition and industry/manufacturing.
This blog was written by Amdissa Teshome, Independent Consultant & Social Science Researcher
Featured image: Apollo Habtamu/IWMI. Aregahegn Birhanu waters young roses at AQ Roses PLC farm near Ziway, Ethiopia.
[2] The
Ethiopian Economics Association, the Forum for Social Studies and The Ethiopian
Academy of Sciences are a few platforms where such dialogue is fostered.
[3]
Zewdie, Y., A. Teshome, K. Berhanu
(2014) An in-depth Study of Ethiopia’s
Agricultural Transformation Agency, Final Report Submitted to TANGO
International & Bell and Melinda Gates Foundation (USA) May, 2014, Addis
Ababa.
Over a couple of weeks in December, I visited our long-term field sites in A1 resettlement sites in Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. It is now nearly 20 years since land reform and the beginning of our research engagement across these sites, and it was fascinating to hear about the changes that have been unfolding (more on this later in the year), but it was also interesting to learn how our research is being used on the ground.
At the heart of our work has been the on-going monitoring of what has happened to people’s livelihoods over time. This has involved a number of surveys, approximately each 5 years, but, in addition, we have been undertaking thematic studies on topics that have arisen as a result of conversations in the field. Many of these have been reported on this blog. They have included investigations exploring how young people have responded to land reform; the role of small towns in local economic development; explorations of land tenure and local authority, and much, much more.
One such theme that emerged a few years back was farmer-led, small-scale, informal irrigation. This was clearly becoming more and more important and we started a focused study under the auspices of the APRA programme, supported by DFID. One output of this was an open access paper in Water Alternatives. I hadn’t realised it until this most recent field visit that this had really struck a chord amongst the farmers we had been working with. As one commented, “it’s the talk of the area”. Copies of the paper had been distributed to those involved in the research when it came out, and one of the leads of an irrigation group on one of the resettlement farms had recently used it at a national field day held in one of our sites in Masvingo district.
Mr Mumero’s speech made the case, as we do in the paper, that irrigation policy was missing the mark, and that small-scale irrigation by farmers was transforming agriculture, and the potentials for productive farming. The assembled dignitaries – including the director at the Ministry of Provincial Affairs, the provincial and district heads of Agritex (ag extension) and MD and Chief Agronomist of Charter Seeds – were impressed. Hopefully the argument will catch on with those who make policy and fund programmes, with a diversion of effort towards what works, not wasting effort and funds on what has failed for years.
In another field site, we learned that our small booklets on local economic development had also been used for lobbying for change, particularly around supporting local business linkages with farming. Together with a series of videos, the booklets document the work of the DFID-funded SMEAD project (Space, Markets, Employment and Agricultural Development), making the case for supporting farm/off-off farm linkages along value chains. We had just reprinted a pile of the booklets (both in English and Shona) and farmers were delighted to take them to continue their lobbying work with government officials.
This blog is widely read, but not necessarily in our field sites as Internet coverage is not universal and bundles are pricey, and what’s more electricity supplies are today very intermittent. So over the years, we have produced two low cost book compilations of blogs, organised by themes – Debating Zimbabwe’s Land Reform and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Challenges for Policy – which can be read in hard copy. These have been widely distributed in the field sites (as well as government offices and elsewhere), and it was great to learn that in several sites, they have been read as part of ‘reading circles’ in the villages, as our original 2010 book, Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities, had been.
Zimbabwe’s land reform farmers are by-and-large an educated and articulate bunch, and are fascinated by the results of our research, and especially so when it’s focused on their concerns. They have always been the most exacting peer reviewers of our research. So, it was good to learn that the blog has emerged as part of a process of community self-education in the places we continue to work.
And it’s not only in the field sites where the research has been the inspiration for other activities. A few months ago, I heard from a blog reader that she had used a few of the blogs as the basis for a fictional exploration of the themes in a collection of short stories. A couple were subsequently developed as a play, and the result – Prisca’s Story – was performed at the Mitambo International Theatre Festival in Harare in October last year, which sadly I missed.
Research funders are obsessed by demonstrating ‘impact’, but very often impact only emerges slowly and through long processes of engagement and not through the choreographed approaches that are often proposed (or required). I had no idea much of this was happening, but it’s always good to know that research has diverse uses and can be repurposed and shared with different audiences. Hopefully, the blog in 2020 can help with this mission.
For readers of the blog who want to catch up, the ‘top 20’ most viewed blogs posted this year are listed below. Many looked at older ones too, and there are now over 370 to choose from. As ever, the favourite blogs are a mix of broad development issues with a Zimbabwe angle, or more specific reports on research, either our own field results or reviews of papers by others. There are a remarkable number of people who follow the blog, and many more who check in from all over the world. As in previous years, the readers come mostly from Zimbabwe, then South Africa, the US and the UK.
Over the last few years the blog has been commenting on occasions on UK engagement – from the 2015 election onwards. Given the recent events in the UK, all these blogs have relevance today. The comment ‘be scared’ sadly rings true.
The food situation in Zimbabwe in 2019 was bad. But what was the cause? Drought was part of the story – you just have to see the dramatic pictures from Victoria Falls to realise something is up. But the food crisis is not just the result of a natural disaster, prompted by a major El Nino event across the region. Nor is it just due to land reform as too often surmised, as land reform has had complex impacts on the food economy, both positive and negative.
The situation is poorly understood because national food security assessment data are not effectively disaggregated, and miss certain dimensions. In particular, post-land reform grain market and exchange processes are very poorly understood.
These elaborate, informal processes – often sharing food from surplus producing land reform areas with other, poorer communal and urban areas – are however heavily disrupted by the economic chaos and uncertainty currently gripping the country, as discussed last week.
A few weeks ago I did an article for The Conversation, which explored these issues. In case you didn’t see it before, it is reproduced below.
Economic chaos is causing a food security and humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe
Since Zimbabwe’s land reform of 2000 – when around 8 million hectares of formerly large-scale commercial farmland was distributed to about 175,000 households – debates about the consequences for food security have raged.
A standard narrative has been that Zimbabwe has turned from “food basket” to “basket case”. This year, following the devastating El Niño drought combined with Cyclone Idai, some 5.5 million people are estimated to be at risk of hunger, with international agencies issuing crisis and emergency alerts.
It is unquestionable that this season was disastrous – only 776,635 tonnes of maize was produced, more than a third below the five-year average. Nevertheless, the story of food insecurity is more complex than the headline figures suggest.
It’s true that Zimbabwe’s food economy has been transformed over the past 19 years. Aggregate production of maize has certainly declined, and imports have become more frequent.
But Zimbabwe suffered food shortages, often precipiated by El Niño events, before land reform. These too led to the need for more imports. And surpluses have also been produced since land reform. For example, in 2017, there was a bumper crop. Some of it was stored and has been used to keep people going.
Getting behind the headline figures and understanding an increasingly complex food economy is essential. Our on-going research shows just how complicated the picture is.
Farming and food
Since land reform, we have been tracking livelihood change in resettlement areas in a number of sites across the country. Our research is exploring how people have fared since getting land, asking who is doing well and not so well, and why. Some of our key findings include:
Crop production is higher in the land reform areas compared to the communal lands. Larger land areas allows new settlers to produce, invest and accumulate.
There are substantial hidden flows of food between land reform areas and poor rural and urban areas, as successful resettlement farmers provide food for relatives, or sell food informally.
There is a significant growth of small-scale, farmer-led irrigation in resettlement areas. This is often not recognised, as production occurs on disparate small plots, frequently farmed by younger people without independent homes.
Trade in food across regions and borders, facilitated by networks of traders, often women, is significant, but unrecorded.
Market networks following land reform are complex and informal, linking producers to traders and small urban centres in new ways. Outside formal channels, the volume and flows of food through the system is difficult to trace.
Simple aggregate analyses of food deficits, estimating the numbers of people at risk of food insecurity, do not capture these new dynamics. National surveys are important, but may be misleading, and local studies, such as ours, often do not match the national, aggregate picture.
So, what is going on?
Access to food: complex relationships
Food insecurity is not just about production, it is also about access. This is affected by the value of assets when sold, the ease with which things can be bought and sold in markets, the value of cash as influenced by currency fluctuations and inflation, local and cross-border trade opportunities, and all the social, institutional and cultural dimensions that go into exchange.
When these dimensions change, so does food security. And this is particularly true for certain groups.
Take the case of Zvishavane district, in Midlands province of Zimbabwe. In the communal area of Mazvihwa, there was effectively no production this season. Some got a little if they had access to wetlands, and a few had stores. But compared to 30 years ago, production is focused on maize, which stores poorly, rather than small grains that can be kept for years.
How are people surviving? Some seek piecework in the nearby resettlement areas; others have taken up seasonal gold panning; others migrate to town, or further afield; others get help from relatives through remittances; while others are in receipt of cash transfers or food hand-outs from NGOs.
With small amounts of cash, people must buy food. It’s available in shops, but expensive. So a vibrant trade has emerged, with exchanges of maize grain for sugar or other products. And it’s especially people from the land reform areas who are selling their surpluses. Many have relatives who got land, and some travel there to get food, but there is also a network of women traders who come and sell in the communal areas.
Aggregate surveys almost always miss this complexity. There are sampling biases, as the importance of the resettlements as sites of production and exchange are missed.
There are data problems too, as it is difficult to pick up informal exchanges, and income-earning activities on the margins. The result is that each year there are big food insecurity figures proclaimed, fund-raising campaigns launched, but meanwhile people get on with surviving.
This is not to say that there is not a problem this year. Far from it. But it may be a different one to that diagnosed.
Economic collapse is causing a humanitarian crisis
As the Zimbabwean economy continues to deteriorate, with rapidly-rising inflation, parallel currency rates, and declining service provision, whether electricity, fuel or water, the challenges of market exchange and trade become more acute. Barter trade is more common, as prices fluctuate wildly and the value of physical and electronic money diverge. With poor mobile phone networks due to electricity outages, electronic exchange becomes more difficult too.
Collapsing infrastructure has an effect on production also. Fuel price hikes make transport prohibitive and irrigation pumps expensive to run. Desperate measures by government often make matters worse. The now-rescinded edict that all grain must be supplied to the state grain marketing board undermined vital informal trade. Meanwhile, the notoriously corrupt “command agriculture” subsidy scheme directs support to some, while excluding others from the provision of favourable loans for government-supplied seed, fertiliser, fuel or equipment.
Economic and infrastructural collapse is threatening food security in Zimbabwe. Even if there is good rainfall this season, the crisis will persist. Farmers will plant, produce and market less this year. While food imports are needed for targeted areas and population groups for sure, this may not be the biggest challenge.
Stabilising Zimbabwe’s economy is the top priority, as economic chaos is causing a humanitarian crisis.
The Centre for African Bio-Entrepreneurship (CABE) successfully hosted the APRA Annual Review and Planning Workshop in Naivasha, Kenya from 2-6 December 2019. Members of the three APRA work streams and APRA Consortium, stationed at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), also participated.
The theme of this year’s workshop was Impact, Communications and Engagement (ICE). It aimed at reviewing tactics and strategies for communicating policy-relevant insights and evidence ‘nuggets’ emerging from the APRA studies to key stakeholders and clarifying pathways to impact.
During the workshop, the Accompanied Learning for Relevance and Effectiveness (ALRE) initiative was discussed, which aims to improve engagement efforts, trace influence, and identify lessons for improving future programming within APRA.
Highlights from the workshop include a review of progress on APRA research activities during the year related to work stream 1 (panel studies), Work Stream 2 (longitudinal studies) and work stream 3 (policy studies). Presentation of policy-relevant insights evidence from the work stream studies related to the APRA Outcome Indicators and cross-cutting themes; clarification of engagement priorities and plans from the Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (PIPA) and Theory of Change (ToC) workshops to bring about outcome-level change.
Participants of the APRA Annual Workshop 2019
Key messages from the work stream presentations:
As a result of changes in farm structures and agricultural commercialisation in Nigeria, there has been an increase in medium-scale farms contributing to agricultural commercialisation and development of agricultural output and factor markets. This has significantly contributed to a rise in land prices and restrictions on the possibilities for smallholder farmers to increase their land size in certain areas. In addition, the farmers have stepped up by acquiring additional land and expanded into medium-scale farms (MSFs). This has led to high agricultural commercialisation and productivity, and enhanced households’ livelihood outcomes.
It was noted that there are high
levels of commercialisation of oil palm in South-Western Ghana due to specialisation and highly
stratified oil palm economy by gender, generation and class.
Comparing food-based versus tobacco-led agricultural commercialisation in Zimbabwe, Vine Mutyasira observed that tobacco-led commercialisation resulted in higher returns leading to whole-farm productivity-enhancing investments in technologies, livestock and assets.
In the case of long-term
change in cocoa commercialisation in Ghana, Joseph Yaro mentioned that the
private and state sector investment can boost access to technical innovation
for intensification of production thus improved incomes for cocoa farmers.
From the longitudinal analysis of sunflower
commercialisation in Singida, Tanzania, Christopher
Magomba highlighted that the sustainability of sunflower commercialisation and
productivity has led to low uptake of inputs such as fertiliser and seeds, low
purchasing power; limited access to extension services leading to low yields
and competition from alternative annual crops (maize, green gram).
Rice commercialisation has ensured household and the community food security and considerable change in the livelihood options for smallholder rice farmers in the Fogera plains of Ethiopia. This change contributed to rising in rice processors from 1 in 1997 to 123 in 2018, increased employment opportunities especially for casual labourers and interdependence of rice production and labour markets and 93% of the processors became rice sole proprietors recording the average value of 360 thousand birr/processor. Whereas in Tanzania, intensification was mentioned as a solution to small and medium-scale farmers in rice commercialisation.
Speaking on the political
economy of growth corridors and agricultural
commercialisation, Ngala Chome, a PhD candidate, said, “There are diverse
pathways to commercialisation along the growth corridors and they range from
the establishment of estates/plantation to the creation of block farms and
cooperative groups, to contract farming arrangements, which emerge through
infrastructure development.” He added that ethnic politics play a critical
role, as claims over resources are contested between indigenous groups and the
state.
Presenting on behalf of Jodie and Seife, John Thompson mentioned that good incentives may increase the role of small to mid-sized enterprise (SME) agribusinesses in commercialisation pathways.
John Thompson, Research Fellow at IDS and Joint Co-ordinator of the Future Agricultures Consortium, speaks during the 2019 APRA Annual Workshop
In order to empower the youth, the emphasis was placed on providing more programs or schooling to millions of young people in order to reduce rural-urban migration, the former highlighted in this Ghana-based youth engagement blog.
Click here for
information on the 2018 APRA Annual Review Workshop, held in Accra, Ghana.
By Mercy Nduati, CABE Communications Officer
Cover image: APRA West Africa Hub Regional Director, Joseph Yaro leads a group discussion on communicating effectively. Credit for all images: Mercy Nduati
A workshop on the National Rice Sector Development Strategy of Ethiopia to guide the national rice research and development interventions for the coming ten years (2020 – 2030) was organised on December 13, 2019, at Debre Zeit in Ethiopia. The national rice strategy aims to achieve increased production, productivity, quality of locally-produced rice for the development of a vibrant and dynamic domestic rice industry to ensure self-sufficiency in Ethiopia.
The workshop was attended by
officials and senior experts from the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and
development partner representatives, including the Japan International
Cooperation Agency, Sasakawa Global 2000-Ethiopia, the Mennonite Economic
Development Associates, EthioRice project, and the Agricultural Transformation
Agency, as well as the APRA Ethiopia team. The one-day event was organised to
include presentations about the main aspects of the strategy, evidence of best
practice, as well as presenting about current challenges and opportunities in
the rice value chain along with the key aspects of Government of Ethiopia’s 5th
Strategic National 10 year Perspective Plan. As part of this 10-year
perspective plan, MoA has included rice among its 10 strategic commodities and
the rice sector development strategy will play a crucial role in refining the
MoA agriculture sector perspective plan.
Research evidence from published and forthcoming papers from the APRA Ethiopia team was shared with the task force responsible for drafting the strategy. Specifically, key nuggets of the APRA research work were presented for consideration in the strategy that relates to the major role of rice processors in the development of the rice value chain development esp. in promoting smallholder rice commercialisation, the emerging rural labour market, and the competitive challenge presented by imported rice. It is expected that these key issues will be crucial components of the strategy with clear intervention strategies that ensure the development of the rice sector.
Partial view of the workshop participants (Dec 13, 2019)
T. S. Jayne, Milu Muyanga, Ayala Wineman, Hosaena Ghebru, Caleb Stevens, Mercedes Stickler, Antony Chapoto, Ward Anseeuw, Divan van der Westhuizen, David Nyang.
This study presents evidence of profound farm-level transformation in parts of sub- Saharan Africa, identifies major sources of dynamism in the sector, and proposes an updated typology of farms that reflects the evolving nature of African agriculture. Repeat waves of national survey data are used to examine changes in crop production and marketed output by farm size. Between the first and most recent surveys (generally covering 6 to 10 years), the share of national marketed crop output value accounted for by medium-scale farms rose in Zambia from 23% to 42%, in Tanzania from 17% to 36%, and in Nigeria from 7% to 18%. The share of land under medium-scale farms is not rising in densely populated countries such as Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, where land scarcity is impeding the pace of medium-scale farm acquisitions. Medium-scale farmers are a diverse group, reflecting distinct entry pathways into agriculture, encouraged by the rapid development of land rental, purchase, and long-term lease markets. The rise of medium-scale farms is affecting the region in diverse ways that are difficult to generalize. Findings indicate that these farms can be a dynamic driver of agricultural transformation but this does not reduce the importance of maintaining a clear commitment to supporting smallholder farms. Strengthening land tenure security of local rural people to maintain land rights and support productivity investments by smallholder households remains crucial.
In
2000, Malawi adopted a pluralistic and demand-driven agricultural extension
policy which liberalised agricultural extension provision, allowing multiple
stakeholders to freely provide extension services that are coordinated and
regulated by the government. This policy is anchored by an implementation
system called District Agricultural Extension Services System (DAESS) that has
established structures at District, and community levels, bringing together
stakeholders to either demand or provide extension services. Stakeholders including farmers are expected to
articulate their extension needs and present them to extension providers for
action. However, the government has remained the main provider of extension
services in Malawi.
Nineteen years on, there has been a worrisome trend on the sustainability of delivering extension services – farmers are not patronising government extension services and it seems their incentives are skewed. Farmers’ perceptions towards government extension services have changed when compared to the time preceding the 2000 policy initiatives.
Why aren’t farmers patronising government extension agent activities?
While the government of Malawi has the largest number of extension workers on the ground, they are finding it hard to attract the attendance and active participation of farmers in their extension activities, be they meetings, or demonstrations. Interviews with key informants revealed that NGOs have distorted the agricultural extension landscape in Malawi by giving monetary allowances and other freebies, like food and snacks, as a strategy of ensuring high attendance and active participation of rural smallholder farmers. This has skewed incentives for participation and conditioned the farmers to expect to be ‘bribed’ with certain tokens.
Amidst
this, government extension apparatus faces chronic resource challenges to
facilitate the mobility of extension staff to deliver extension services in
their areas of jurisdiction. One government extension worker in Mchinji said:
“… government does not have money to give to farmers who participate in our extension meetings. Sometimes we do not have even office stationery. So, we cannot afford to be buying food for farmers for coming to our meetings. As a result, because farmers are used to the culture of monetary allowances promoted by our NGO partners, farmers find government extension meetings less rewarding.”
While
another in Ntchisi expressed;
“…most farmers do not come to government-organised extension activities because we do not give them handouts like money and food. Extension meetings by NGOs are scrambled for by the smallholders because of money and food given. NGOs also give free inputs to farmers. Even when in rare cases government tries to emulate the NGOs, it cannot meet the frequency and intensity of the NGOs in as far as handouts are concerned.”
Other
extension workers tend to have an opportunity to interact with farmers when
commissioned by an NGO. A Ntchisi extension worker said that such meetings are
treated differently. He observed when the same government extension worker facilitates
activities organised by NGOs, many farmers attend and actively participate,
indicating that high farmer apathy in government extension activities is not
due to poor extension skills and attitudes by government extension workers, but
rather the absence of monetary and food incentives.
Some extension workers in Ntchisi admitted to not visiting villages to deliver extension services unless for purposes of registering beneficiaries and delivering inputs under the government-sponsored Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP). Preoccupation with FISP has obstructed the delivery of other core extension services.
Extension meeting on collective marketing of tomatoes in Kamtande Village, Bembeke Extension Planning Area, Dedza, Malawi Photo credit: courtesy of Nothando Vinkhumbo Chiloro; Graduate of Agriculture Extension 2019, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Government extension workers reduced to FISP officers?
Life history interviews conducted revealed a common perception among smallholder farmers that government extension officers in the districts have been reduced to Farm Input Subsidy officers. Most farmers reported only seeing the agricultural extension workers either when registering farm FISP beneficiaries, or when they delivered FISP coupons to the farmers.
Are the incentives to participate in extension services sustainable?
NGOs have justified the provision of allowances and other freebies as necessary in order to facilitate the movement of farmers to the extension meetings, and compensation for time spent at meetings, even though the farmers are the ultimate beneficiaries of such meetings. Other extension service providers, actors and stakeholders have blamed the NGOs for encouraging a culture of handout, even disadvantaging fellow non-governmental players who have no resources to ‘buy’ the participation of farmers.
This
culture is threatening sustainability of extension services beyond the NGO
project period. NGOs’ biggest limitation is that they operate in an impact area
only for limited period due to the short-lifespan nature of their projects.
Once an NGO project phases out, the extension services also cease. At their own
peril, the farmers that remain behind are more likely to continue shunning
government agricultural extension services due to lack incentives– failure to
access agricultural extension services may affect realised outcomes, for example with yields and farm incomes.
Mobilisation strategies for farmers are likely to be beneficial if organised around a creation of ownership and an emphasis on the value of extension services, not just on the material benefit of attending. However, the rent-seeking behaviour among farmers is also fierce; it is driving participation which restricts a culture where technologies can be taught through extension over time, or more pertinent, when the NGO in question leaves a locality.
Conclusion
The complaints by smallholder farmers that extension workers are not visiting their households and fields to provide them with extension services must be analysed within the context of the demand-driven and pluralistic agricultural extension policy.
Extension
workers can only operate by responding to the demands of farmers, but services
must be demanded in the first place in order to be provided. There are several
reasons why a farmer might not demand extension services:
farmers may not be aware of
how to demand extension services and what channels to use;
farmers may be lacking urgency
to demand services to solve their challenges;
farmers perceive that government
extension workers are financially incapacitated to deliver their functions;
extension workers may be
overloaded with work to react swiftly on demands. Already, there is one
extension worker who attends to 3,000 farmers, against the recommended number
of 500-700 ;
furthermore, given the high
levels of rent-seeking among farmers, that like any economic agent, they may realise
that government extension services do not attract tokens, therefore
disincentivising any participation.
There
is need to critically assess the flow of extension demands to extension workers
and feedback provided to farmers. Why is the extension system in place failing
to generate and facilitate responses on demands from farmers? Could a unified
approach between the extension-leveraging strengths of the NGO, and the government
method, be the way to go? Or should the government provide adequate resources
to match NGO activities? Alternatively, could
NGOs align with the government approach and stop providing incentives? The 2000
extension policy is under review, therefore what strategies would best address
these implementation challenges?
Written by Masautso Chimombo, APRA Malawi (based on APRA Qualitative study being undertaken in Mchinji and Ntchisi district)
Cover photo: Demonstration on Mbeya fertilizer making at Mtelemuka village, Chisepo Extension Planning, Dowa District
Cover photo credit: Isaah Bakili, Graduate of Agriculture Extension 2019, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Over the last month there have been a number of reviews of progress – or the lack of it – since the ‘coup’ of November 2017 (see, for example, a recent BSR here). President Mnangagwa arrived in post on the back of much good will and hope for change. But hopes have been dramatically dashed since. This is not only due to the failure to address political reforms as required under the Constitution, but also a failure to confront underlying economic challenges, the inheritance of the Mugabe era. The flood of external investment failed to materialise, and the process of dealing with debt arrears and the negotiations with the IMF has been convoluted and protracted.
The situation today in the formal economy is dire. The recent budget statement was a farce, with made-up numbers conjuring up a fictional story. No-one believes the story being spun. Trust is the basis of any economy. Once lost, it is difficult to retrieve, and wild swings in exchange rates between different parallel rates, combined with accelerating inflation, means that things have become uncontrollably uncertain. Such uncertainties can provide opportunities for a few – those able to ‘rinse’ money, capitalise on fake prices and hedge against dramatic changes. These capitalist cowboys profit from chaos, and there are those in the political-military elite who are doing so today through a range of schemes.
Living through uncertain times
This leaves everyone else living in precarity through deeply uncertain times. For those who can insulate themselves from the mainstream economy, survival is possible. So, those with a secure source of remittance income, for example, can buy solar panels, generators and transformers to avoid the endless power cuts from ZESA. They can dig deep boreholes at their homes to assure clean, reliable water. And they can employ people to queue for fuel or food or any other commodity in short supply; or jump such queues using bribes, foreign currency or premium payments. There are others without such resources who must live in the informal economy, making do. This is hard, creating anxiety, stress and fear. Those who must dodge the law to sell illegally, for example, must confront violence or pay possibly the highest ‘taxes’ of any citizen to pay off the enforcers.
And then there are farmers. In such a chaotic economy, they may have the greatest resilience of all, as they can supply for themselves, and trade locally in an increasingly barter-based rural economy. The formal channels of marketing – and so some agricultural commodities – are frequently a waste of time, but alternatives emerge in the survival economy, which, against all odds, is supplying food across urban and rural areas.
In 2019, Zimbabweans have joined the citizens of places like the Democratic Republic of Congo in the darkest days of the Mobutu regime when the economy collapsed. Zimbabweans have learned the skills over two decades now, and the memories of the dramatic economic collapse of 2008 are etched on many people’s minds. In the DRC this capacity to get by, to ride the storm to make-do through resourcefulness and initiative, is termed ‘débrouillardise’. It doesn’t translate well into English, as it’s not a passive sense of hopelessness or coping or muddling-through free of active agency. It is a set of culturally-rooted skills that are actively applied in the everyday; part of life in an uncertain, turbulent world.
A new narrative that takes uncertainty seriously
The STEPS Centre at Sussex is just ending its year focused on the theme of uncertainty (check out the multiple resources, including podcasts, videos and blogs here). Reflecting on the Zimbabwe situation, our engagement with the politics of uncertainty across a range of domains has been hugely revealing. Too often, we assume we are dealing with controllable, manageable risks not deeper uncertainties, where we don’t know what the outcomes are. Predictions, forecasts and technical plans are what follows from a risk-control approach. Yet, if things are uncertain, ambiguous or even subject to ignorance (where we don’t know what we don’t know), then a risk approach – as seen in the imagined figures and forecasts in Zimbabwe’s recent budget statement – makes no sense, giving a false sense of being in control.
Professor Mthuli Ncube, Zimbabwe’s finance minister, with his background in mathematical finance, is steeped in this quantitative risk paradigm and the world of precise models and confident predictions. This may work in Oxford or Geneva but not in Zimbabwe’s economy where radical uncertainties play out. As the economy fragments, it’s the parallel, informal economy, dominated by uncertainties, ambiguities and ignorance, where the action is. Here, the standard measures of economic management being attempted by Ncube and being suggested by the IMF have no effect.
Some imagine a reform package that will bring things back to ‘normal’, provide a sense of order and control, based on principles advocated for liberal market economies where the informal sector is not significant. A recent report from Chatham House was of this type. It’s an odd read as it doesn’t connect with realities on the ground, and conjures up an imaginary, wished-for economy.
Instead of senseless dreaming and fictitious prediction based on fantasies of control, a new narrative for the economy is required, one that takes the uncertainties of the real, everyday economy seriously. Only then will the necessary trust be built in the basic functioning of the economy – formal and informal – so that some much-needed stability can emerge.
The Nigerian
cocoa industry has seen a resurgence with the recognition of agriculture in
national economic development. However, its level of growth, especially with
regards to commercialisation has been limited. There have been reported cases
of cocoa farms being sold to give way to other enterprises; at the same time,
there have been reports of a rebound in cocoa activities across the country.
The different scenarios have implications for the livelihood of cocoa farmers
and their households. Based on this, this study examined the growth
trajectories in the Nigerian cocoa sector.
The aim is to
examine to what extent cocoa forms the livelihood patterns of the household, what
degree of ‘stepping away’ there is from the cocoa sector; the extent of
commercialisation, as well as the livelihood outcomes of household’s activities
in the cocoa sector. An exploratory study of 50 cocoa farmers was carried out
in Ondo State, the main cocoa producing state in Nigeria, using structured
questionnaires and the Key Informant Interview guide.
The findings
show continued male dominance (73.47%); productive age engagement (46 years)
and smallholding (~5.8ha). Despite an average household size of 6 and
dependence of 4; at least 1 individual has migrated from the cocoa farming
household. Income distribution reveals that a majority (44.9%) had a monthly income
of N25,000-50,000 (£54-£107), while
only 8.16% had income in excess of N100,
000 (£214). About 40% of the farmers
were also engaged in non-farm activities to supplement the income from cocoa
farming.
Most of the respondents
(75.5%) had cocoa as their main crops, with other crops as supporting that.
Most of the farmers (75%) also produced hybrid cocoa beans, an indication of
stepping up in cocoa production.
Production estimates were given at an average of 2421kg; with a high
proportion of cocoa seed sold (97%), and little impetus for local-level
processing. Hence, commercialisation for Nigerian cocoa farmers is still based
on low value primary products. Household level decision in production
activities is made by the male household heads (78.72%), and decision on labour
hiring by male heads at (89.36%).
Labour
allocation shows that male labour is preferred (10 male to 6 female), working
approximately 8 hours per day; while female labour works for an average of 3
hours per day. Gender roles appear in male and female family labor allocation.
The male members were mainly involved in planting, spraying, trimming and
slashing. Female members on the other hand carry out harvesting, fetching of water
and minor post-harvest sorting and processes. Both male and female are found as
input dealers and traders. Social capital was an important accumulation for the
cocoa households with 61% belonging to some form of association. These
associations provide a sort of safety net at different periods. Credit for productive activities is sourced
mainly from friends and families (20.83%).
Livelihood
outcome indicators show that food and non-food expenditure averaged N 22, 489.8 (£48.16) and N 17,030.61 (£36.46), respectively;
implying a per capita expenditure of N6, 586.74 (USD 18.30/£14.10) per month.
This may be the reason for the relatively good proportion of cocoa farmers in
non-farm income activities. The main source of drinking water was the stream
(24.96%), while the main cooking fuel was firewood (63.27%)
A couple of
policy issues can be deduced from this survey. First, organised and formal
credit is largely unavailable. Hence, expansion, commercialisation and value
addition (indicators of stepping up) is limited. The current initiatives by the
Federal government to extend up to 60% of loanable funds in commercial banks
thus needs to be monitored for compliance. On the other hand, any fears that
the banks have over this initiative could be allayed by ensuring that farmers
are all subscribed to insurance by the National Agricultural Insurance
Corporation (NAIC).
Second, the study suggests a need to integrate processing into farmer’s on-farm cocoa production in order to maximise revenue from their activities. This would in many ways serve to increase the value of the sector and allow the actors to have additional inroad into the global cocoa economy.
During last year’s election campaign, Tendai Biti from the opposition MDC, characterised the rural areas as ‘reservoirs of poverty’ in need of ‘liquidation’. Such a characterisation of course is a huge generalisation. Any rural policy must take a more differentiated view, and these blogs have offered some data from four communal areas in Masvingo province, contrasting them with their A1 resettlement neighbours. Given the insights offered, what are the implications for rural development policy?
The previous blogs have shown that, on average, communal area households across Masvingo province are asset and income poor, with little surplus produced on-farm, and with limited engagement in agricultural markets, even in relatively good years. Reliance on remittances, off-farm informal work and hand-outs from the state and NGOs is central. There are a few who are making it, but very few; most people are very poor, and with limited land areas and a lack of money circulating locally, no prospects for local level accumulation. For the next generation, without jobs and with no land, the prospects are bleak. This means that focused social protection measures on those most vulnerable will remain a priority for the communal areas.
What should development agencies focus on in the communal areas?
Given this, what then should the state and development agencies do? Should they simply be a site for humanitarian aid, keeping people alive, hoping that there will be an exit to other areas, ‘liquidating’ these areas in favour of the urban economy?
I am not so pessimistic about rural development, but communal areas’ futures rely centrally on the prospects of the wider economy. If this takes off again and jobs are created, money will flow back to the rural areas to support elderly relatives and younger children, and the need for external aid will decline. Even with aid, reliance on external sources of income, including remittances, is far more important, as our data show.
This has been the pattern since when the communal areas were created as ‘reserves’ through colonial legislation. They were never meant to be vibrant, productive places for entrepreneurship and accumulation; they were meant to be providers of adult (usually male) labour, and a cheap route to providing social security for those not in the workforce. But of course since the economic reforms of the 1990s, the labour market has changed, and there are no longer ‘jobs’ available, just work, often temporary, informal and precarious. Currently, there is very little even of that, as the economy tanks further. Turning the economy around is the most significant rural development intervention of all.
Rethinking rural development: a territorial approach
Beyond this, how to think about rural development? As mentioned in previous blogs, the land reform got rid of the divisive dualism of the old order, creating a new more mixed agrarian structure, with a mixture of land sizes and ownership arrangements. Communal areas must be thought of as part of this; indeed in area and population terms, the dominant part.
With A1 (smallholder) and A2 (medium-scale) resettlements next to or nearby all our communal area sites, their presence is felt. This is in relation to exchanges of food, labour, grazing, technology, skills and so on. There are much more fluid boundaries than before (although of course conflicts exist) and links to urban areas are often less to the large metropolitan centres of Harare, Bulawayo and Masvingo, but more to the smaller towns and growth centres embedded in rural areas, such as Mvurwi, Mazowe, Chatsworth, Gutu Mpandawanda, Ngundu and Chikombedzi.
It’s in the rural small towns where labour is being employed, crops are being sold, processing is taking place, services are supplied and shops and businesses are expanding. The growth is intermittent and fragile, and faltering currently with the latest turn in the on-going economic crisis. But looking to these areas is vital, along with the A1 and A2 areas where labour is employed, tractors hired and grazing and other contracts are issued.
Rural development investment that benefits the communal areas may have to be focused on these areas, supplying credit and finance, support entrepreneurs and training in new skills, as part of a wider territorial plan. Our data show that, in particular, the A1 areas are richer, more productive, investing and accumulating more, but, crucially, they can also drive development elsewhere through providing employment, services, natural resources, equipment and so on.
For development agencies, this means getting beyond the communal area project focus to a wider rural development strategy. There are too many chicken or nutrition garden projects in communal areas that are going nowhere. They may alleviate poverty at the margins, but are more palliative than transformative, and most collapse when the donor leaves. Beyond the clearly-needed social protection support for extremely vulnerable groups, and some of the basic infrastructure investment that’s sorely needed in the absence of state support, much communal area agricultural development is a waste of resources.
I say this reluctantly as I was involved in many communal area projects in the 1980s and 90s, but having seen how agricultural development can occur following redistribution of land, I now believe we were operating in such a constrained setting that it could never have made a difference. A wider view, with a post-land reform economic geography, however, opens up many opportunities.
The role of the state and donors has to be enabling: encouraging enterprises, facilitating linkages and improving basic infrastructure (roads, mobile phone signals and so on) that economic development relies on. Fewer chicken projects, more road building, and then let people get on with it. External assistance can also help with planning, and particularly the revitalisation of capacity in the local state.
This must link economic development to land administration and governance, for example, and focus especially on economic facilitation of hubs and growth poles where success is already bubbling up. This will allow local government, together with line ministries, to move from a role currently restricted to limited regulation, taxation and the running of beer halls to one with a greater economic role at a territorial level.
Moving to a local economic development focus however means allowing donor funds to be used in the new resettlements (currently prevented by ‘restrictive measures’ – aka ‘sanctions’). This would mean donors could engage in a wider, more meaningful approach to local economic development that connects areas and economies in new ways. This will create sustainable opportunities for poor people as part of a wider economic transformation. This is what pro-poor rural development means for Zimbabwe; not keeping people poor in the communal areas, trapped in a colonially-defined land-use and economic framework, and with development opportunities currently constrained by a narrow focus on projects in communal areas.
This post is the last in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
Ever since the 1880s when cocoa began to be planted in southern Ghana, new land has been acquired for cocoa trees. These have expanded westwards from the first lands planted below the Akwapim ridge, just north of Accra, 130 years ago. The driver for this expansion has often been older groves being lost to disease, including black pod and swollen shoot virus.
In
recent times the frontier has expanded deep into Western North Region.
Juaboso-Bia District lies barely 20km from the border with Côte d’Ivoire. As we
found out when starting studies of cocoa farming in the District, the land
frontier for cocoa is now all but closed. Little or no forest remains where new
cocoa groves can be planted. What primary forest still exists is protected,
enforced by forest guards who uproot the crops of any farmer, adventurous or
desperate enough, to enter the protected forest.
Within
the District, the now large village of Juaboso Nkwanta, was founded in 1932
when a road was constructed into the forest, shifting an existing village and
its population to the roadside. With road access into the dense forests,
migrants were attracted from Ashanti and other regions. Land was plentiful: the
challenge was to organise labour to work the cocoa and food crops that could be
planted.
Subsequently,
the village has grown both naturally and from in-migration. Incomers and new
generations of locals have expanded their cocoa farms into the surrounding
forests.
Cocoa beans being dried at Nkwanra-Juaboso in the Western North Region of Ghana Photo credit: Joseph Yaro
The
cocoa groves provide a modest living for the farmers. One hectare of cocoa
typically yields 800 kg of dried cocoa beans, worth around US$1,100 at current
prices, although at least double the yield is possible with more intensive
management. Some farmers have ten or more hectares of cocoa. Around the
cocoa groves, and amongst young trees, food crops of cassava, cocoyam, plantain
and vegetables have been planted. So prolific are these plots, that farmers
report local food markets to be glutted.
Cocoa
earnings have been invested in housing, school fees, travel and the profusion
of shops and trading evident in the market places. Depots providing inputs —
fertiliser, fungicides, insecticides — and collecting cocoa are common; rural
bank branches can be seen in every market centre. The market centres of Juaboso
District hum with activity. Meanwhile on the roads, dozens of articulated
lorries haul the sacks of dried cocoa towards the ports during the six-month
long harvest season.
But
with the land frontier now closed, if farmers want higher incomes, they have to
find ways to intensify their cocoa, but without incurring extra costs that
outweigh the value of extra production. That implies at least two things.
One is access to the right inputs. While the Cocoa Marketing Board, (COCOBOD) distributes inputs, it no longer has a monopoly. With a liberalised market for inputs, an emerging problem is the sale of fake inputs. These have already been seen in Juaboso: fake sprays not only are ineffective in controlling pests and diseases, but also can destroy cocoa trees, according to farmer reports.
The
other requirement is getting technical know-how. Ghana has a leading cocoa
research institute and sub-stations in major cocoa districts. COCOBOD, has field staff
providing advice, distributing inputs, and organising spraying and pruning of
cocoa trees.
Farmers, however, probably need to be more than just recipients of advice. They must get used to repeatedly making marginal changes to cocoa production to raise productivity — and react to the threats of pests and diseases. For more than 50 years, the production technology for cocoa in Juaboso has seen only small changes: newcomers have been able learn the ropes quickly. From here on, however, success in cocoa will require more investment in keeping up to date and innovating.
Focus group of men farmers in in Juaboso Nkwanta, Western North Region, Ghana. Photo credit: Steve Wiggins
By Joseph Yaro & Steve Wiggins
Cover image: Focus group of women farmers in Juaboso Nkwanta, Western North Region, Ghana. The women are being quizzed by Dorothy Takyiakwaa. Photo credit: Steve Wiggins
With growing economic, environmental, and conservation pressures, it is imperative that the question of community land ownership in the pastoral areas of northern Kenya be addressed; otherwise, chaos and conflict will likely ensue. Land ownership is a core concern of politics in Kenya, and conservation organisations are soliciting political favours to propagate their conceptualisation of conservancies within pastoral lands.
Image credit: Mohamed Noor
Kenya’s Community Land Act, written to protect community lands, was passed in 2016, and the regulations brought into effect in 2018. According to the Act, community land in pastoral territories shall be available for use by members of the community for the grazing of their livestock. Furthermore, a registered community may reserve special purpose areas, including farming areas, settlement areas, community conservation areas, access and rights of way, cultural and religious sites, urban development, or any other purpose as may be determined by the community. Unfortunately, Kenya’s Ministry of Lands has yet to enact a national public awareness campaign to sensitise communities to understand the process of registering their land. Furthermore, the ministry has not deployed the necessary infrastructure (i.e., registrars, equipment and offices, etc.) to kick-start the registration process. In the meantime, community land continues to be expropriated by both public institutions and private individuals without due process and/or consultation with local communities. This leaves an opening for conservancies to influence the apportionment of community lands for conservation purposes.
Community land management
A dominant, popular narrative points to herders as the main source of environmental degradation and wildlife depletion. Yet, rarely do these explanations link such problems to the way many of these conservation institutions and land conservancies were established, squeezing pastoral lands and forcing changes in land-use and management. A political ecology analysis is needed to re-focus attention on how conservation narratives advanced by the state and other powerful actors have historically influenced the establishment of conservation in core pastoral grazing zones.
Some argue that, in order to maintain control and stewardship of conservation/ranch lands, conservancy actors should engage local pastoral communities in order to form “community conservancies.” These supposedly demonstrate that the land belongs to the community and benefits of conservation practices and money raised through conservation tourism would return to the community. However, in practice, this is not the case. In truth, the community is not privy to the top-down decisions that the conservancy is undertaking. This therefore leads to feelings of exclusion and is unproductive for community engagement.
An elder from the Borana community whom I interviewed recently explained that pastoralists move strategically aiming not to disrupt wildlife corridors. In case they overlap with wildlife, they change their migration routes to avoid conflict. They have their own grazing plans passed down from their forefathers that stressed the importance of coexisting with wildlife. They leave time, particularly at night, for wildlife to drink in pastoral wells and graze on livestock lands unencumbered. They show great respect and deference to local wildlife by naming their children and towns after the wild animals and tree species that are found there.
Among the Borana pastoralists of Isiolo, the “dedha” is a customary institution that manages common pool resources and ensures sustainable community use of rangelands. The dedha system provides directives on where to graze during wet season, mid-season, and dry season in order to avoid pressure on the rangelands. Reciprocal resource agreements are also a common feature in pastoralist customary traditions. These govern the use of shared resources, making one community’s resources available to a neighbouring community, particularly during times of drought or hardship.
Pastoral protest
Pastoral leaders have released a public statement asking the government for support in addressing problems they have identified when managing their lands. They are especially keen to achieve legal recognition of their local institutions and community laws in relation to biodiversity conservation.
The growing disjuncture between conservation organisation goals and the disenfranchisement of local people from their lands has led to certain pastoral communities taking action. On 2nd May 2019, Isiolo residents led protests requesting that all current and future conservation activities by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) taking place within Isiolo County be banned by the county assembly and governor’s office and any existing land deals between the county council and NRT be dissolved. Pastoral communities are also requesting that laws governing private wildlife conservation be enacted to protect community lands throughout the county.
The main impetus behind these requests are that existing deals side-line traditional resource governance structures that were in place well before conservancies were formed. They also asked the government to address alleged extrajudicial killings of community members at the hands of NRT in the name of conservation, and NRT’s emphasis on livestock destocking as a strategy to reduce land pressures. NRT has responded to these and other criticisms (see articles 1 and 2 for NRT response); however, community groups remain unsatisfied and are requesting legal intervention and land protections to be put in place.
A new conservation model?
Conservation in modern Africa is founded on a neocolonial premise, one centred on conquest and land acquisition for elites. This is promoted by high-value, market-based conservation and often supported by ‘aid’ programmes. Conservation in northern Kenya is not just about wildlife and its protection; it is part of a much larger political drama. Appointments to the boards of organisations like the Kenya Wildlife Service and the NRT can be highly political, and conservation organisation leaders sit on various influential global boards, where power can extend well beyond the borders of a single conservancy, influencing development policy agendas and aid and charity funding.
To address some of these concerns, more attention must be paid to participatory, action-research exercises that evaluate customary as well as state-led environmental governance. The objective here would be to strengthen the capacity of pastoralists to conserve their landscape and broaden the scope of the involvement of culturally recognised customary leadership in sustainable landscapes and common pool resource management.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for pastoral communities to cope with new challenges, such as mass internal/transboundary migration, political marginalization, mega project development (e.g., LAPSSET), and de facto land privatisation. Compounding these issues are the general inefficiencies of the government in implementing existing policies and the persisting practice of imposing development with insufficient prior consultation with local communities and leadership structures.
Moving forward, a new conservation model must successfully incorporate traditional indigenous land governance strategies and bring into full effect the legal protections that pastoralists have in determining and benefiting from use of their community lands. This, however, necessitates a collaborative approach between INGOs, conservancy organisations, national governments, county governments, and local engagement. Community-based organisations, advocacy groups, elders, women, and particularly, youth groups must be central.
It is my experience working in the field with pastoralists that concerns over land governance are greatest among young people as our research shows that they feel a direct threat to their current and future livelihoods where older generations may not be present to witness a possible extinction to pastoralism due to land grabs, increased government pressure to settle mobile populations, and global environmental change.
Given recent protests in Isiolo and violent conflicts over land rights on Kenya’s wildlife conservancies in Laikipia County in 2016–2017, pastoralists are asking to have a seat at the table and to be heard. Pastoralists are demanding that the government enforce their rights and legitimise community claims to land. So far, the government has not taken the necessary actions to inform local populations of their rights and to make good on the promises that were set forth within the Community Land Act.
The question is therefore left – if not the government, then who will effectively address the issue of community land protections in the pastoral margins?
By Mohamed Noor, PASTRES Affiliate researcher
Cover image credit: Tahira Shariff
This article first appeared on the PASTRESwebsite on November 15 2019
When we started our research on the new resettlement areas in the early 2000s, one of the things people frequently said to us was that they were happy about the new land and the opportunities is brought, but found the lack of basic facilities really challenging. Basic infrastructure was absent. There were no roads, and so no transport to town. There were no piped water supplies, wells or dip tanks, or at least only what was left by the former farmer. Electricity connections were few and far between. Toilets and wells had to be dug from scratch. And schools and health clinics were often several hours walk away. It was tough, and for some too much as they moved back to their communal areas. Better to live in poverty with few opportunities but with access to services, they argued. Some houses split, with kids living with grandparents in the communal areas, while the parents established the new homes in difficult circumstances.
Nearly twenty years on, things have changed. The hardships of the early years have not disappeared but the investment in infrastructure has been significant, mostly through private effort. Roads have been built or repaired, sometimes by community groups. Schools have been constructed and health clinics established, again with community input. They are poorly staffed and with limited supplies: but that is the case across Zimbabwe, such is the depth of the sustained economic crisis and the failure of the state to provide.
Today the difference between the new resettlements and the old communal areas is not so stark. Certainly in respect of privately provided services, the resettlements are in better shape, as people have invested surpluses from their agricultural production in well building, toilet construction and so on, as well as solar lights and diesel pumps.
The tables below offer an average picture across three of our communal area sites (Gutu West is missed out because the data was not of sufficient quality).
Domestic water
In terms of domestic water supply, the vast majority (around 80%) of communal area households have access to a protected water supply via a protected well or a hand pump. Piped water remains rare, but getting water from a river or dam is too. This is the consequence of decades of state and project investment in water supplies in the communal areas. Most of these facilities are communal and the original installation was paid for. This was a significant development achievement, particularly in the 1980s. I got typhoid and bilharzia when living in Mazvihwa communal area in the 1980s, when there was no borehole and only the river mifuku and an open well. This would be much less likely now: in these matters development does make a difference.
Although the level of coverage is approaching the same levels in the resettlement areas (unprotected, hand dug wells without a borehole are more common), these are mostly individual, private investments. Many started with a shallow well to get water at the beginning. These have been deepened, and many have had boreholes and sometimes pumps attached. Such private supply is important for domestic provision, but also small scale irrigation, which has really taken off in the resettlement areas (see earlier blog).
Such upgraded investments are expensive however, and not everyone can afford them, so there are some who have nothing and make use of shallow uncovered wells, streams or dams to provide for water. With the absence of the state, and donors and NGOs boycotting investments in the resettlement areas due to ‘sanctions’, the principles of universal provision of water supplies is not evident (the same applies to education). In service provision the dividing line between state (and donor/NGO) provision in the communal areas and private, individual provision in the resettlements is clear, with some left behind.
% households
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu North
Piped
1
0
0
Hand pump
6
68
18
Protected well
77
9
72
Unprotected well
16
22
10
River/stream/dam
1
0
0
Toilets
A similar story can be told around toilet provision. Like protected water supplies there were many donor-funded and state-led programmes around toilet provision in the 1980s and 90s. The famous Blair toilet was built everywhere. This provided a safe, sanitary toilet for everyone, and many households were beneficiaries. I was surprised by our data showing that many still did not have a toilet in the communal areas, although many share in a cluster of homes, which may account for the results. That said, a majority outside Mwenezi have a latrine at their home, and most of these are closed latrines with a roof, usually of the Blair style that prevent the spread of flies, and one in Gutu North even has a flush!
% households
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu North
Flush
0
0
1
Latrine with roof, inc Blair toilets
45
43
65
Open latrine
0
16
12
No toilet at household
55
39
17
In the nearby resettlements, toilet coverage ranged from 13% in sparsely-populated Mwenezi A1 areas to 77% in Masvingo district, in sites near Gutu West. Like the wells, these mostly started as open latrines, but many have been upgraded. All again through private investment.
Lighting
With very few rural electrification schemes, lighting sources are generally privately provided in both the communal and resettlement areas. The availability of cheap solar panels and batteries has revolutionised this. Outside Gutu North, which seems still to be more reliant on candles, lighting for 60-80% of households was electric solar, allowing also for the charging of the ubiquitous cell phone too. When I lived in a communal area in the mid-1980s, it was always candles for writing up PhD notes, or for the kids in our home to do school work by.
% households
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu North
Electric
2
1
1
Paraffin
3
13
32
Candles
17
1
37
Solar
31
52
12
Battery/dry cell
29
32
6
Since the 1980s, energy sources for cooking have not changed much, however, and across our sites 100% of households rely on fuelwood for cooking. In the land scarce areas of Gutu this is a challenge, especially for women who often have to travel long distances to search for fuel. In the resettlement areas this is not yet a big problem, and again fuelwood is the near universal source of energy for cooking.
Services and well-being: the costs of state failure
Service provision in rural areas affects health and well-being. Better health through better water and sanitation makes a big difference. Having electric light in the evening, and being able to charge a phone, makes all sorts of things possible. This improves the lives of many. The public investments in the communal areas following Independence made a big difference, and reduced morbidity and mortality as the DHS surveys show over time.
This sort of public support has not been available in the resettlement areas due to lack of government capacity and the ‘sanctions’ (aka ‘restrictive measures’) from donors. Instead, private investments in water supplies, sanitation facilities and energy sources have replaced state/donor provision, although not for everyone. There are some living in the new resettlements who have not made it, and are living in very basic homes with no safe water and no toilet, with kids unable to go to school, as provisions for transport over overnight accommodation are not possible.
While it is good to celebrate the initiative and entrepreneurship of the new settlers, the costs of state failure, exacerbated by persisting resistance by international actors to work in what they deem to be ‘contested areas’, takes its toll on the most marginalised and deprived. Nearly twenty years after land reform, investment in basic infrastructure and services in the resettlement areas is long overdue. The state in particular has failed in its most basic obligations, while international players in the NGO and donor community are not upholding their own commitment to humanitarianism and universal development due to entrenched political positions.
Today, a major post-land reform effort must be combined with the rehabilitation and repair of the neglected communal area infrastructure, where investment has been minimal too over the past 10-20 years, except for the few favoured project islands where NGO and donors land. As the final blog in this series argues, thinking about rural development more broadly than isolated project interventions, and as part of local economic development at a territorial level, across communal areas, resettlements and small towns, is essential. Infrastructure and services, including water, sanitation and energy, must be at the heart of this agenda.
This post is the eighth in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
Social and political relations are central to land and agricultural production. Unlike in the resettlement areas, where new institutions and relations had to be built following land reform, those in the communal areas draw on longer traditions. Like in the resettlements, institutions are often hybrids, combining ‘traditional’ (such as chiefs and headmen) and ‘modern’ (such as village committees and councillors). In the communal areas, party officials and war veterans are less of a feature, although very often party structures have melded with other arrangements; something that is also happening in the resettlements twenty years on.
Informal institutions: the social fabric of rural life
These officially-recognised institutions may however not be the most important. In fact, churches were often referred to as the most important institution, providing support in various ways. Across our sites, the presence of evangelical churches is noticeable. In Mwenezi, the top two churches attended by households in our sample were the Zionist church and Joanne Masowe’s apostolic church, although two-thirds of households said they were not affiliated to any church. Only in Gutu were the Methodists (Gutu West) and the Catholics (Gutu North) ranked as the most important church, above the Zionist and Zaoga churches.
Outside Mwenezi, nearly 80% of households were linked to a church. The Catholics and Methodists have had long traditions of supporting education in the Gutu sites, which is evident in the engagement with schooling both of previous and current generations, including both men and women. Evangelical churches by contrast emphasise church-based solidarity, including giving and sharing funds raised for the church. Such churches do not frown on polygamy, and there are few progressive views on gender rights shown in most evangelical churches, with women taking on particular, subservient roles.
When asked about leadership positions of both senior men and women in our sample, it was links to churches – as pastors, deacons, preachers, as well as church secretaries, treasurers and so on – that were pointed to. Church leadership positions were the most significant among men for the approximately 15% of male household heads who identified themselves as leaders in some way. These roles came second to involvement in village committees, both traditional and modern, as well as burial societies in Gutu North.
For women, churches were important, and women often took on administrative roles. Indeed, for approximately 10% of women who were identified as having leadership positions, the role of secretary or treasurer of committees (for gardens, burials, churches, as well as a range of projects) was the most commonly named role.
These roles linked to projects of various sorts, some supported by churches, others by NGOs, are an important feature of communal area life, linking people outside the immediate kin network. This may result in support ranging from loaning of draft power, sharing of ideas or links to markets. Traditional group based activities, such as work parties (humwe) for tillage, weeding or other activities, persist in Mwenezi and Chivi in particular, and were identified as happening for 34% and 13% of households in 2016-17. They are less common in the Gutu sites (7% and 3%), where a more individualised culture has emerged.
Where is the state?
Links to the state and external projects are also an important feature in the communal areas. Despite the decline in state capacity between 52% and 53% of households had engaged with an extension worker in the previous year. Most of these were agricultural extension officers from Agritex, but also there were mentions of seeing state veterinarians too. Across our sites, between 13% and 26% of household heads had gained a ‘Master Farmer’ certificate (see earlier blog), and so had participated in a rigorous training course on agriculture. Some of these qualifications were gained years ago, but the continued presence of state actors in the communal areas is a feature of life. The Agritex extension worker, even if there is no fuel in his or her motorbike, is known.
In Mwenezi, around two-thirds of households were recipients of state handouts through the Presidential Scheme, mostly seed and fertiliser. This however was absent in the other sites in 2017, although of course state handouts increased in the run-up to the election the following year. Outside Mwenezi and Gutu North engagement in other projects was not a big feature, as NGOs working in the communal areas concentrate activities and miss out huge areas. In Mwenezi, project links were around a donor-supported irrigation project and a contracting scheme for sorghum led by the brewing firm, Delta.
Compared to the land reform resettlements, the communal areas are much more connected to state- and NGO-led development. There are projects, demonstrations, events, and the infrastructure of these areas, the inheritance of the 1980s in particular, including schools, clinics and government offices, demonstrates state presence, even if the buildings are decrepit and the staff poorly paid. In the resettlement areas, such investment has not happened since land reform, and the developmental state very often feels very distant. Instead, in the resettlements, much more present is the ruling party (ZANU-PF), alongside the war veterans who led the land invasions from 2000.
In the early days, the politics were intense, with ‘seven member committees’ installed to protect the land reform gains, mirroring structures from the liberation war. This has subsided since, as the administrative state has attempted to establish structures for development, and allowed ‘traditional’ authorities to claim control. But without state resources and personnel, and with no donor or NGO projects due to on-going ‘sanctions’ (or ‘restricted measures’ if you prefer), the dynamics are different, and tensions frequently arise between the different forms of authority, which since the imposition of the VIDCOs in the 1980s, has not been a feature of communal area life.
Institutions and agriculture: comparisons with the resettlement areas
How does all this affect land and agriculture? In the communal areas, well-established systems exist, involving both headmen and village committees, who allocate land, help resolve disputes and often assist with marketing, the delivery of state or NGO relief handouts and the negotiation projects with external actors. This system is evolving in the resettlements, but the creation of a sense of ‘community’ – essentially emerging from scratch – with established trusted relations at the centre, takes time. In the resettlements, more individual arrangements for supporting agriculture, notably around marketing, tend to emerge, reflecting the more individualised, entrepreneurial culture in the resettlement areas.
The difference in social and political relations – and associated institutions – has important gender implications. In the communal areas, women are widely involved across institutions, more usually in supporting roles, but nevertheless important ones. Women’s involvement in churches, including in leadership positions, is significant. Women are also central to projects and development activities in all of our communal area sites. This partly reflects the absence of men in the communal areas, who may be migrating for work, but also the increasing openness of what is still a highly patriarchal society. In the resettlements, while land reform offered opportunities for some women, notably those cast out of tight kin-based communal area settings because of divorce, accusations of witchcraft and so on, roles in most resettlement areas remain very circumscribed, and men, who are more present, take the lead.
Thinking about institutions, formal and informal, is central to rural development and building more sustainable livelihoods. Too often this dimension is forgotten in the rush to address technical and economic questions. But whether it’s land, production, market or service provision (the subject of the next blog), social relations are key.
This post is the seventh in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
APRA Nigeria have published a final report from the meeting where a new advisory board was created, at Rockview Hotel, Abuja on September 27, 2019.
In the report, Prof
Aromolaran explains that the purpose of the meeting was three-fold:
To inaugurate the APRA Nigeria WSI Advisory Board/Steering committee;
To create a framework for the operation of the Board to facilitate the achievement of the purposes for setting it up;
To deliberate on the alternative approaches that will ensure that the information coming out of this APRA research would be impactful on the livelihood of small and medium scale farm families in Nigeria, beginning from the two focus states of Kaduna and Ogun
He also pointed out
that, as technocrats, members of the APRA Board are expected to help translate APRA
research output into effective policy, stressing that farmers are tired of ‘impactless’
research activities. During the 2018 primary data collection exercise, farmers
openly declared that they were fed-up with incessant questioning in the name of
research and desire to see real changes begin to happen as a result of
information gathered from the numerous investigations they are subjected to.
They were assured that this project is designed to maximise impact and that this
is one of the motivations for setting up this board.
The APRA Nigeria Workstream 1 Research Team (WS1) aims to study the potential opportunities and challenges associated with medium-scale (investor) farms as a pathway into agricultural commercialisation. The research is being conducted in conjunction with Michigan State University (MSU), who are leading policy studies on agricultural commercialisation synergies and trade-offs between small-scale and medium-scale farms in Nigeria. The purpose of the advisory board (which comprises of nine prominent individuals from national and state government, industry and agribusiness) is for APRA Nigeria research output to be converted into policies, which advocate for effective implementation towards improving household livelihoods in the APRA research study states.
Members of the APRA Work Stream 1 team from Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe met with colleagues from the APRA Data Management Support Team met at IDS on 7-11 October. These studies are using a combination of detailed household surveys and qualitative research (focus groups, life histories, key informant interviews) to analyse individual and household ‘selection choices’ related to different agricultural commercialisation pathways and the livelihood outcomes resulting from these related to women’s empowerment; labour and employment; food and nutrition security; and poverty and inequality. All four teams completed the first round of a two-wave panel in 2016-17, during which they interviewed a total of over 4,000 households.
The IDS workshop aimed to review findings emerging from the country studies, reflect on the relevance of the original hypotheses, and prepare a detailed plan for conducting the second wave of the panel with equivalent sample size. During the workshop, the teams reviewed and refined the core survey instrument, confirmed field enumerator training and data collection procedures (using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) technology), agreed protocols for real-time data monitoring (implementing for the first time- the APRA dashboard for data monitoring) and quality assurance, and clarified roles and responsibilities for data cleaning, analysis and the preparation of key outputs. A key focus was on identifying and planning ahead to address any gaps in technical capacity for data collection and analysis. Fieldwork for the second round of the panel will begin in late November 2019 in Ghana, with the other three countries planning to implement their surveys in early 2020.
Members of the WS1 teams engage during IDS workshop
Agricultural enterprise in Nigeria’s economy has played a key participatory role by addressing the issues of poverty, food insecurity, unemployment and foreign revenue acquisition. Cocoa has been integral to championing the agricultural economy as it remains the top most exported cash crop, alongside oil palm and rubber, accounting for 58.4 per cent of Nigerian foreign exchange earnings from 1960-1970. From 1970-1985 it reduced significantly to 5.3 per cent, while between 1980 and 2000 this figure was only 4 per cent.
The cocoa production sector has remained unstable for decades and the federal government has tried to revive it through various intervention projects that aimed to reposition it as an export cash crops for additional foreign exchange earnings to crude oil. This has resulted in a recent increase in the export value of agricultural goods to Asia in 2018 by 167 per cent from N67.3 billion in 2017 to N179.6 billion. This growth was mainly driven by demands from Japan, India and China who are now major dealers in the chocolate industry. Other major importers of Nigeria’s cocoa are Netherlands, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia and Belgium.
Dr. Adeola Olajide in one of the cocoa farms in Akola community, Osun state, Nigeria
However, the present state of cocoa production in Nigeria is lagging behind other countries in the commercialisation of, hence the need to re-evaluate cocoa production among household farmers to identify the current constraints responsible for the continual decline in the sector. APRA engaged the stakeholders (Cocoa farmers, policy makers, input dealers and marketers) in Southwestern Nigeria (Osun, Ondo and Ogun States) to uncover areas of concern that is restricting cocoa commercialisation in the region.
Stakeholders’ engagement meeting in Atakunmasa local government secretariat, Osun state, Nigeria
Stakeholder feedback
Osun State
Obstacles that have emerged in cocoa enterprise in southwestern Nigeria are multifaceted. In Osun state, the activities of illegal gold mining on cocoa farms that cause serious land degradation issues has become more prominent. Mr. Isaac Olaitan, a cocoa farmer in Osu village, explains that “Illegal miners go into cocoa farms with or without the permission of farm owners to mine gold using excavators to dig the ground thereby causing loss of cocoa trees”. Another victim, Mr. Yusuf revealed that his farm was destroyed by illegal miners, and that although he reported the incident to police, he claimed that they did respond.
Although the Divisional Police Office (DPO) in the area stated that the crime of illegal mining is a bailable offence under the law – Mr Yusef reiterated that – the division encourages settlement out of court to avoid conflict in the community. He asserted that land owners often don’t farm cocoa, while those who crop don’t own land[1]. Hence, he advised that cocoa farmers in the community should also be honest with themselves as this will reduce the issue of conflict with farmers that grow cocoa on leased farms. However, feedback from the meeting revealed that corruption is a major reason that leads to injustice. The law enforcement agents who are meant to curb this act have been paid off, thereby allowing the free entry of illegal miners to farms. It was further discovered that there are some miners with government permits who destroy land within cocoa plantations in a bid to create paths or roads leading in or out of the apportioned mining areas.
Illegal mining site within cocoa plot in Osu community, Osun state, Nigeria
Ondo State
In Ondo state, it was a completely different scenario. During the stakeholders’ engagement meeting, urbanisation and timber logging were the major concerns that negatively affected future commercialisation of cocoa in the state. Other associated problems included ageing cocoa trees, parasitic organisms, lack of improved cocoa varieties, high cost of inputs, poor knowledge of agrochemicals, low quality chemicals, climate change, poor enabling policy environment and poor access to extension services. However, an increase in the amount of logging in the state is becoming problematic, as was expressed by one of the discussants “cocoa production has been bedeviled with lumbering activities, which has affected cocoa enterprise as a major contributor to livelihood in the state”.
Stakeholders’ engagement meeting in Akure south local government area, Ondo state, Nigeria
Ogun State
Stakeholders’ engagement in Ogun state revealed that there is a high number of older farmers dominating the enterprise, and that youth involvement in cocoa enterprise in the state is “close to zero.” Many youth have moved to cities where they operate okada (motorcycle transportation) businesses. According to the discussants, okadas provides quick income and though not sustainable, many consider it preferable to waiting for cocoa that will take a minimum of three years to grow. Furthermore, labour for cocoa production in this area is significantly higher than in neighbouring states, and securing land for cocoa production has cultural limitations. Women don’t have right to land by inheritance, which is the common tenure system among cocoa farmers in the state.
Stakeholders’ engagement meeting in Odeda local area, Ogun state, Nigeria
Summary
The general consensus from the engagement meetings was that the aforementioned are battles that must be won to secure the future of cocoa in southwestern Nigeria. This is essential when considering the pivotal role that the enterprise plays towards economic recovery, poverty reduction, men and women empowerment, and food and nutrition security. There is a future for cocoa in Nigeria, and although there are challenges, the discussants believe that these can be overcome.
[1] This is a paradox we noticed. Cocoa farmers on leased land don’t have land inheritance, which is the common form of land ownership, while on the contrary, people with land inheritance don’t venture into cocoa production but rather lease out their land to get yearly premium from the land from those willing to cultivate cocoa.
Written by Kehinde Adesina Thomas
Cover photo credit: David Greenwood-Haigh from Pixabay Other photos credit: Kehinde Adesina Thomas
With low agricultural output, off-farm work is an essential complement to agricultural production in Zimbabwe’s communal areas. Working away has always been part and parcel of communal area livelihoods; indeed these were established as ‘labour reserves’ in the colonial era.
However, the patterns of labour migration have changed significantly over the past decades. Gone are the days of a stable job in town (or in the mines or farms), sending of regular remittances, and later retirement, with a cattle herd built up and enough land to subsist on. Following the retrenchments of the 1990s and the economic collapse of the 2000s, the wider economy is much less reliable. Jobs tend to be short-term and precarious, if they exist at all. Migration out of the country is an option, and has been taken by some, mostly to South Africa, but also to Botswana and the UK. Immigration restrictions and xenophobia are the risks migrants face in these longer migrations, even if the returns are better and more reliable.
Across our sample, we see reliance on migrant labour and remittances highest in Mwenezi. This is where agriculture is most unreliable, despite the study period’s results, and traditions of cross-border migration to South Africa most established. The recent jobs sample households mentioned included: game tracker, game guard, Illala palm products/basket making, Hippo Valley worker, builder, carpenter, well digger and herbalist. Most of these jobs were local, and linked to the economy in the area, including the national parks and the sugar estates near Chirdezi. Working in the estates was a more common feature of the households in Chivi, who included cane cutters, estate workers, security guards, drivers and others. Tour guides in local conservancies were also noted. Building, as in all areas, was a common profession, usually for local contracted work on a self-employed basis. Storekeepers were common too in Chivi. By contrast to Mwenezi, which is quite remote, in Chivi there were more teachers, police, soldiers and other government workers mentioned. This reflects the more established educational systems in the area, and so access to jobs requiring qualifications. This was definitely the case in the two Gutu sites. In Gutu West there were a large number of teachers and those with government jobs, again reflecting the (mission) education in the area over a long period. There were also bus conductors, security guards and self-employed local builders. In Gutu North, the majority of off-farm work was of this type, with builders, guards, drivers and a variety of business people, including shopkeepers, noted.
Overall, the data show that 25-57% of households had someone employed elsewhere. With the exception of Chivi, half to three-quarters of household heads were either currently employed or had been so in the recent past. Remittances were received by more households in Mwenezi (57%), but only between 11% and 21% of households received regular remittances in the other sites; a figure way lower than recorded in the 1980s and 90s. Again, other than Mwenezi, surprisingly few younger household members (aged 21-30) were in employment elsewhere. Those in Mwenezi joined the border-jumpers to South Africa, sometimes via Mozambique, whereas others were stuck at home, suffering the consequences of the poor state of the economy and lack of jobs. A predicament of many young people in rural areas, as our recent paper showed.
In the communal areas, levels of employment and reliance on remittances has historically been high. Studies in the 1980s put it as high as two-thirds of households receiving a significant proportion of income from remittances. With the decline in the wider economy this is now much lower and, although we didn’t ask about the figures, the amounts and regularity of remittance income has definitely declined. Nevertheless, reliance on off-farm employment, locally, within Zimbabwe and in other countries, is higher than seen in the nearby A1 resettlements, especially in the wetter areas where agriculture is profitable. In the Gutu and Masvingo district A1 areas remittances were only received by 7% of households in 2011, for example.
Access to education has historically been essential in gaining better-paid and stable jobs, such as those in government service. Since 1980, the ‘born free’ generation benefited massively, and before that the areas with mission education (such as via the Catholic and Methodist churches in Gutu) have been well educated. But with the decline in formal jobs, the collapse of pay in public service and periods of hyperinflation, the benefits of employment have dramatically declined. Better to set up your own business as a shopkeeper or builder than rely on formal employment. That younger household members in the 21-30 age group are barely working (outside the border jumpers of Mwenezi, which of course is dangerous and precarious) is witness to the collapse of the old livelihood strategies in the communal areas.
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Household head in a job, or having had one recently (%)
72
22
49
51
Household member employed elsewhere (%)
57
25
45
43
Remittances received in last year (%)
57
20
11
21
Lead women with non-agricultural independent income (%)
38
nd
5
16
Children aged 21-30 employed elsewhere
45
1.2
5.2
7.3
Off-farm activities: livelihood diversification
Given the limitations of agriculture, livestock keeping and formal employment, people must resort to other activities to earn enough. The table below shows the range of income earning activities recorded in the year before the 2017-18 interviews. It shows that poultry and vegetable sales are important for a good proportion, along with trading, especially in Mwenezi (near international borders) and Gutu North. Livestock related sales are important in Mwenezi, as discussed in an earlier blog.
Gender differentiation of tasks is evident across these activities, with vegetables and poultry largely the domain of women, as are a range of the other activities noted (including basket weaving, pottery etc.). Livestock sales are led by men, as are other activities such as building, carpentry, brick-making and transport provision. However, gender roles are not fixed and, with lack of jobs elsewhere, men and women are much more flexible about roles. Young men for example will garden, trade and sell chickens, unheard of in previous generations.
Natural resource-based activities are important, but these are concentrated in Mwenezi where plentiful resources still exist. Fishing, woodcarving, and wild food harvesting are important. This includes (illegal) hunting and collection of the famous mopane worm, which both are important activities in the Lowveld. None of our areas are serious gold panning areas like other parts of the country, but a few travel to nearby rivers to try their luck. None of this is seriously remunerative: enough to supplement but not survive, and in the case of the Chivi and Gutu sites, relatively few households engaging. Again, this is a sharp change from before when natural resource-based incomes were much more important.
% households
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Remittances
57
20
11
21
Pensions
38
8
4
3
Maricho local piecework
1
17
15
3
Food/cash for work
51
26
18
18
Land rental
nd
0
0
2
House rental
3
2
0
1
Cattle sale
44
2
0
0
Milk sale
24
2
0
0
Poultry sale
63
16
19
23
Goat sale
37
3
1
0
Vegetable sale
43
25
11
21
Dry vegetable sale
23
`4
1
1
Brewing
26
9
3
7
Building and carpentry
43
6
7
5
Brickmaking
25
5
1
0
Wood carving
44
21
2
3
Pottery/baskets
73
1
1
5
Fishing
27
0
2
0
Wild products
26
2
2
0
Gold panning
12
3
5
5
Trading
67
2
3
10
Tailoring
65
0
3
0
Transport hire
5
0
2
1
Grinding mill
nd
0
2
4
As the data on off-farm income earning shows, today diversification is all, and many communal area households have multiple streams of income, often with small, infrequent, uncertain amounts. This is much more stark than we see in the A1 resettlement areas, where, for most, agricultural incomes make up the bulk of livelihood support. For a significant group – perhaps 30-40 percent of households – agricultural surpluses generate investments that allow for further income to be made. In contrast to the resettlements, incomes derived from house rentals, shops or transport services are minimal in the communal areas. Instead of new businesses being established on the back of agriculture, people are scraping a living, hiring out labour and using natural resources.
Farm labour: a big contrast with the resettlements
On-farm labour has really taken off in the resettlements. With larger plots of land, the demand for labour is high, and those without resources to invest in their own land often hire out labour. This is often more than the occasional bit of piecework; there are quite a few permanent jobs, often involving a mix of tasks, including herding, housework etc. This is not evident in the communal areas, as the table below shows.
% households
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Permanent labour (male)
5
9
3
4
Permanent labour (female)
2
3
2
3
Temporary labour (male)
9
0
0
5
Temporary labour (female)
2
0
1
13
Work party (average 16/17 seasons)
34
13
7
3
Employed on farms elsewhere (%)
nd
3
0
1
There is very little agricultural labour employed, beyond some occasional temporary labour from the very few who are able to invest in agriculture (male in Mwenezi and female in Gutu North), but not from many households. This is in contrast to the nearby resettlements where, across our A1 sites, farm employment rates are much higher, with, in 2011, 17% of households employing permanent workers and 12% of households employing temporary workers. In Chivi and Gutu West a certain amount of piecework (maricho) is recorded, but this is very occasional, and not regarded as employment.
Precarious prospects
In other words, the patterns of class differentiation seen in the resettlements – between for example petty commodity producers and worker-peasants and semi-proletarians – is not observed to the same extent in the communal areas. There simply isn’t the productive base for surplus extraction and the formation of a worker-peasant/proletarian class. Unlike the studies from the 1980s that showed such patterns in the communal areas, we see much more of a uniform pauperisation of struggling households, who are mixing diverse forms of ‘work’ (rarely ‘employment’ or ‘jobs’), with limited, low productivity agriculture. This is not a classic self-sufficient peasantry, nor do we even see many emergent petty commodity producers – the hurudza; instead we see what Henry Bernstein describes as the ‘fractured classes of labour’, struggling to make a living.
Life in the communal areas, with limited land and poor job prospects, is increasingly precarious. Reliance on aid is important, and this rises from the drier Mwenezi to the wetter Gutu. NGOs and government programmes exist, but this is always hit and miss and not a way to survive. Making a living in the communal areas, with limited agricultural opportunities, is certainly tough. It is no surprise that, when our research partners in the A1 resettlement areas reflect on their lives, they are certain that they have improved, despite the hard work of getting established. Indeed, it is not only the state and NGOs that provide aid to the communal areas, there are significant flows of food from the resettlements to the communal areas that keep relatives, friends, fellow church members and others going, reflective of a new rural moral economy of the post land reform and economic crisis era.
It is these social relationships – with areas and between them – that are crucial when thinking about how agriculture is practised and economies function. The next blog discusses the social institutions at the heart of communal area life, contrasting this with what is found in the more recently established resettlement areas.
This post is the sixth in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
“We are wasting our time talking about living wages and inspectors and new technologies. We need to talk about the fact that our government has sold the livelihoods of ordinary people to big corporates.”
These were the words of Constance Mogale from the Alliance for Rural Democracy, speaking on the final day of the Future of Farm Workers conference, held at the University of the Western Cape last week.
“We say we want land,” she said. “But we must make sure that when we are the farmers and the workers we are not perpetuating an unjust system.”
Calling for a reimagining of the agrarian system, Mogale explained that “big corporates are demonising rural life by demanding trade agreements that are unsustainable and inhumane”.
“We need to link our local struggles to global struggles,” she said. “We need to start demanding appropriate frameworks and realistic prices and targets. We need an agrarian system that gives people the right to choose the way they want to live. This goes way beyond wages.”
Mogale also expressed concern about the future of farming, and the gender dynamics that come into play with the use of technologies such as drones. She pointed out that it is the young boys who are being trained to use the new technologies, while the girls and women are having their privacy and dignity invaded by drones that capture them in the fields where there are no toilets.
While she was not against the use of appropriate technology, Mogale also questioned what was being done to ensure that people on farms can make the transition to 4IR effectively.
“What is going to happen to the farmers who don’t have access to the technology?” she asked. “I see a big gap developing between those who have the resources and those who don’t. It is up to us to ensure that 4IR is balanced with issues of equality while making sure that South Africans can compete in the global market.”
As the previous blog described, the communal area sites we have been studying in Masvingo rarely produced sufficient crops to cover even subsistence needs, and then if so only very occasionally, as with the Mwenezi experience in 2016-17. So what about livestock production?
Given its drought-prone nature, Masvingo province is known as cattle-keeping country. Many of the former white-owned farms were large ranches, often covering vast areas with very few stock. Communal area people were able to make use of this to poach graze and supplement the limited grazing in their own areas. Now with resettlement farms surrounding them, communal areas are more hemmed in. Although in the early 2000s there was surplus grazing in the new resettlements as people settled and carved out fields, this is much less the case now. Indeed, in responses to questions about interactions with nearby resettlement areas, conflicts over grazing (and also thatch grass and fuelwood) came top in the ranking by our communal area respondents.
This means that extensive livestock production is constrained in communal areas, perhaps even more so than in the past. Before the 2000 land reform sometimes negotiations were made with nearby (white) farmers, especially during drought, for access to grazing, but more often herders risked poach grazing, and occasionally suffered the consequences of the confiscation of herds and arrests. However, given the scarcity of grazing in the communal areas, it was worth it.
What happens now? Of course poach grazing persists, hence the recording of frequent conflicts, but also there are quite a few loan arrangements that facilitate access to grazing as animals are loaned to relatives or friends in the resettlements. They then have the benefit of the draft power, manure and milk, and (sometimes) the occasional offspring in exchange, while the owner keeps the animals alive and breeding. This was a very common pattern in the first decade of resettlement after 2000; however as settlers have built up their own herds, and the connections to their ‘home’ areas have faded, they are increasingly reluctant to take on communal area livestock. From our sample, loaning out was absent in the two Gutu sites, but still persisting in Mwenezi.
As the table below shows, with the exception of Mwenezi, our communal area sites could not be described as major livestock production areas. Indeed, over a third of households hold no cattle at all, and are reliant on sharing of others’ for draft power (see previous blog). Outside Mwenezi, smallstock holdings are small, and donkeys, pigs and broilers are rare.an purchase regularly. This was only 6-9% of households in the sites outside Mwenezi, where 23% had purchased cattle in the previous five years.
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Cattle held per household (N)
7.6
4.0
3.1
3.7
Loaned in (N)
1
0.5
0.5
0.4
Loaned out (N)
1.7
0.2
0
0
Above zero cattle (%)
64
66
51
61
Above ten cattle (%)
22
8
6
7.3
Cattle purchased in last 5 years (% of households)
23
8
6
9
Cattle sold in last year (%)
41
6
14
15
Cattle milk sales (%)
24
2
0
0
Goat (N)
7.9
1.8
2
2
Sheep (N)
0.8
0.1
0.5
0
Smallstock sold in last year (% of households)
44
8
14
5
Donkey (N)
1.3
0.3
0.2
0.1
Pig (N)
0.9
0
0.1
0.1
Broiler %
2
9
5
0
Broiler contract (% of households)
1
0
0
0
Herding labour hire (%)
7
4
1
2
Feed inputs (%)
7
0
5
19
Vet inputs %
30
20
23
19
Perhaps only Mwenezi could be described as a livestock system based on production, with a relatively large average cattle (7.6, ranging from zero up to 105) and goat (7.9, ranging from 0 to 60) holdings, and regular sales and purchases. Although more than the other sites, there is still very limited labour hired explicitly for herding (only 7% of households). Cattle milk sales are also recorded here from those with larger breeding herds. This is not surprising given the dry conditions of the area, and the extensive, relatively high quality sweet grazing available. While the bumper sorghum harvest in the years of our study was unusual, livestock production can provide a regular income.
This contrasts with all the other sites where average cattle holdings averaged 3-4; just about enough to maintain a draft span, and provide some transport, manure and milk, but sales and purchase are comparatively much lower. When sales occur, these are usually emergency sales for school fees, medical expenses or a funeral. Replacements are by-and-large through births within the herd, and these are infrequent because of the small herd size and the age/sex composition, which is geared towards older oxen for draft rather than a breeding herd.
Limited intensification
You might expect, with constrained grazing, there would be a shift to more intensified production – for example stall feeding with purchased feed. There is some evidence this is happening to a small extent in Gutu North, where 19% are purchasing feed, but most of this is at a very small level, and largely supplements. In other areas, this is not a phenomenon except for a few who will buy in to support calves or pregnant cows. Contract arrangements for livestock production have not taken off in these areas, which would be another way of financing feed and other inputs for a more intensified alternative. Only a few in Mwenezi are linked to a contract broiler arrangement with a local farm.
With the collapse of state veterinary services in recent years, and the poor quality of dipping chemicals, there has been a rise in tick diseases across the country. This has meant that those with resources purchase spray dip chemicals for private spraying. Some also recorded buying veterinary medicines for sick animals. A quarter to a third of households – those with larger, more valuable herds and flocks – invest in this way, and have learned to cope without state services. The rest remain vulnerable and deaths from a variety of tick-borne diseases are regularly recorded, especially in wetter years.
In sum, outside Mwenezi, despite Masvingo’s former reputation, these are largely not livestock production areas today. Cattle are kept for multiple uses, notably as inputs to agriculture which, despite poor results, is still seen as the core activity. Land areas are constrained in the communal areas with notional grazing areas often occupied by settlements and farms, or very heavily used and so degraded. This is very different to the situation in the past, and in other parts of the country further west in Matabeleland and southern Midlands, where a more livestock-based economy exists, more akin to that found in Mwenezi and the Lowveld areas.
Contrasts with the resettlement areas?
The A1 resettlement areas nearby are not that different. Here cattle are kept primarily as an input to agriculture, for draft power and manure, with milk, meat and live sales being bonuses, and sales key for emergencies. The herd is seen a stable savings account, which, given the volatility of the economy, makes much sense. Yet the herd size is mostly too small to allow for the possibility of making a regular living. In the A1 resettlement areas too, pressure on land is increasing. In 2000, there was plenty of spare grazing, but now more people have arrived, lands have been subdivided and grazing areas are being encroached. With more fields and settlement, the need to for herding labour during the cropping season increases, but labour is scarce and expensive, and relatively few invest in dedicated herding labour, as with the communal area sites. In other words, unlike for crop agriculture, livestock production in the resettlement and communal areas is more similar.
The big exception is broiler production, which, as a project for younger family members and women, has taken off across the new resettlements. Sometimes this is supported by contracting arrangements, but usually it is independent, financed by surplus income from agriculture and off-farm sources. The difference here is the availability of cash for investment. In the communal areas this is rare, and many are living hand to mouth. Occasionally an aid project will come along, but these are sporadic and often last just a few years. For most communal area households usually there’s not enough surplus to do much more than keep going. This is different in a significant proportion (not all by any means – see other blogs) of resettlement households, where accumulation from agriculture can be invested elsewhere and investment drives further investment in process of stepping out (diversifying) and up (accumulating) of livelihoods.
Once again, land redistribution and the opportunities for accumulation that this offers provides the basis for enhanced livelihoods. But this is constrained for land extensive production activities such as with livestock. Former white farmers had hundreds if not thousands of hectares and managed to make a reasonable (but not always very good) living from livestock ranching. With a more equitable distribution of land this is no longer an option, and more intensive approaches to production – broilers, piggeries, stall-feeding and so on – become the priorities outside the areas like Mwenezi with good grazing and land surplus. Such investments, though, need cash, and this is in very short supply, with limited other options in the communal areas as the next blog will discuss.
This post is the fifth in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
The majority of children’s work in Africa is within the agricultural sector. However, there is insufficient evidence on the prevalence of harmful children’s work across different agricultural value chains, farming systems and agro-ecologies. Furthermore, little is understood about the effects of different types of value chains and models of value chain coordination on the prevalence of harmful children’s work or the efficacy of different interventions to address this type of labour.
The programme will be funded through the UK’s Department for International Development and aims to build evidence on: (1) the forms, drivers, and experiences of harmful children’s work in African agriculture, and (2) interventions that are effective in preventing harm that arises in the course of children’s work.
ACHA will initially work in Ghana with a focus on cocoa, inland fisheries and vegetables. Work will then expand to include other countries and commodities. The approach taken will develop more nuanced understanding of harm and harmful work and will put emphasis on children’s own understandings and experience of both work and harmful work in agriculture.
Speaking about the important of the programme, co-director Jim Sumberg said, “This programme offers a critical and timely opportunity to strengthen the evidence base around harmful children’s work, and the interventions that can help reduce it. Our new empirical work will be rooted in rural children’s lived experiences, and a deep understanding of politics and political processes, and as such will provide businesses, governments and others with a much-improved basis for action.” The co-directors of ACHA are IDS Fellows Rachel Sabates-Wheeler and James Sumberg.
We investigated agricultural production across our communal area sites throughout Masvingo province during the 2016 and 2017 harvest seasons. These were relatively good rainfall years, with 690 mm recorded in Masvingo town in 2016-17, for instance. Compared to the past seasons, these were bumper harvest years, especially in the Lowveld site of Mwenezi.
Yet, as the table below shows, with the exception of Mwenezi, none of the sites produced on average sufficient grain to feed a family. If this is estimated to be one tonne of grain per year, three of the sites produced about half this amount on average. Of course there was a wide range, but across three sites only 14-18% households produced over a tonne of grain.
The Mwenezi results are unusual, given that this is drought prone area, but good soils under higher rainfall can produce the occasional good crop, especially as land areas are significantly higher. Here 51% of households produced over a tonne of grain on average across the two seasons, much of this from sorghum. Some sorghum is sold under contract to brewers, but most is retained for food, and because of good storage can tide people over through a number of years.
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Maize 16/17 seasons average (kg)
915
543
509
613
Sorghum (kg)
1312
20
21
36
Pearl millet (kg)
0
3.4
3.9
0
Finger millet (kg)
3.3
1.7
37.6
52.5
% households producing over 1 tonne of grain (16/17 average)
51
16
14
18
Sunflower (kg)
5.8
0
18
12.7
Cotton (kg)
0
0
0
0
Groundnuts (kg)
73
182
189
220
Horticulture sales $ per household
26
6
5
8
Maize sales 16/17 seasons average(kg)
159
60
18
18
Zero maize sales 16/17 seasons (%)
85
89
96
95
Maize certified seed purchase (%)
59
88
90
100
Fertiliser purchase (%)
2
23
52
44
Manure applied (%)
3
37
44
65
Pesticide purchase (%)
40
41
45
23
Credit (%)
0
0
0
0
Contract (%)
13
0
0
0
Overall, crop diversity is limited. Outside Mwenezi, maize dominates, and pearl and finger millet have nearly disappeared, beyond being grown on very small plots for specialist production, usually for home brewing. Groundnuts are grown but not in large quantities and in these sites sunflowers are rare, because of the lack of markets these days. Cotton and tobacco are absent except for a few isolated cases.
Sales are also very limited. A few larger maize and sorghum producers sell, but most don’t. In fact across the two years on average 85%, 89%, 96% and 95% in the Mwenezi, Chivi, Gutu West and Gutu North communal area sites sold nothing, even in these relatively good years. With very few cash crops and little surplus to sell, this is largely a subsistence economy, one that requires off-farm income to supplement meagre agricultural production, as explored in a subsequent blog.
Tillage is especially reliant on access to livestock, which, as discussed in an earlier blog in this series, have a skewed ownership pattern. 50-68% of households use their own oxen, while others hire. Tractors are not a feature outside Mwenezi where a few have bought second-hand machines. Those with without other options must hoe their land, a feature most evident in Mwenezi.
%
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Own oxen
54
68
51
50
Hired oxen
14
28
29
35
Loaned oxen
2
5
11
4
Own Tractor
7
0
0
0
Rented tractor
2
0
0
0
Hoeing
21
3
9
11
Big contrasts with the A1 resettlements
These patterns of agricultural production contrast significantly with the nearby A1 resettlement areas where, especially in the higher rainfall areas, production is higher. In 2010-11 for example, sites nearby the two Gutu sites produced on average 844kg and 1238kg of maize, with 38% of households selling surplus maize. Over the period from 2003-2013, 44% of households in those A1 sites produced more than one tonne of maize. Cultivated land areas are higher, averaging 3.2 ha in the resettlements near our Gutu sites, but also the intensity of production is greater, with higher inputs, including fertiliser (with over half of the households applying fertiliser).
As discussed in a later blog in this series, labour hiring is more common, both of permanent and temporary workers. Across our A1 land reform sites, excluding Mwenezi, over a third of households are regularly producing surpluses and reinvesting in the development of the farm. At the time of our last major census of A1 sites in 2011-12, the level of mechanisation was modest, however, with only half a dozen tractors across all the A1 sites, but this has changed since as people have invested in tractors and other equipment, notably pumps.
In the A1 resettlement areas, this results in a dynamic of accumulation for a significant group, where investments in farm and house improvements occur year on year. Not everyone manages this, and the patterns of differentiation – and associated dynamics of class formation – are very evident, with those not able to accumulate either dropping out and moving away or becoming wage labourers supporting the production of the accumulators.
Across the communal area sites this dynamic is not seen. Those able to realise surpluses are vanishingly few. Only around 15 percent in three of the areas achieved levels of output of grain sufficient to provide for household food needs, and even fewer sold surpluses. And this in relatively good rainfall years.
Although there is obvious differentiation in assets, production, labour hiring and so on, as other blogs in this series show, most communal area households are poor, unable to do much more than subsist off their farms and rely on off-farm incomes of various sorts. Agricultural production in the communal areas is therefore very low input and low output.
As the table shows, across the communal area sites, fertiliser input levels were low, although increasing in the wetter Gutu sites. Virtually no-one uses synthetic fertiliser or manure in Mwenezi, where soils are good and the potential for crop ‘burning’ due to excessive fertiliser is high. This contrasts with the sandy soils of the miombo areas further north, where higher rainfall and leaching means soil fertility is low and additions are required. In all sites, as another blog will discuss further, labour hiring is minimal, and outside Mwenezi collective work parties are very rare.
Perhaps surprisingly, given the low levels of production, outside Mwenezi the vast majority use certified maize seed, purchased hybrids or open pollinated improved varieties. The proportion is less in Mwenezi, but still nearly 60%. The long-term commitment to improved varieties across Zimbabwe persists, supported by a 50 year tradition and continued extension reinforcement. This makes the economics of production of maize very risky, especially if purchased fertilisers are added too, and so this seed, along with most effort in agricultural production, is focused on the homefield areas, where extra labour, fertilisation and, if needed, additional irrigation can be applied. In small quantities, such maize may be produced as green maize for local consumption and sale rather than for grain.
Pesticides were bought by around a quarter of households, but these were in very small quantities and mostly applied to vegetables. Horticulture as a source of income, however, was highest (but not very high) in Mwenezi where irrigation projects provide opportunities. This again contrasts with the A1 resettlement areas, where informal irrigation has taken off in all sites, resulting in significant production of vegetables and green maize for market.
Finally, commercial credit was purchased by no one across the sites. Limited contracting for sorghum in Mwenezi provides some finance, but otherwise farmers are on their own. They rely on off-farm sources and remittances to finance agriculture, but overall, and by contrast to the A1 resettlements, this is a very low input, low output form of agriculture. Indeed, the possibilities of improvement are constrained. Land areas are small, soils are poor or rainfall is highly variable, labour is scarce and many farm owners are old and unable to invest effort.
Communal area projects: missing the mark
Agricultural production remains important of course, but more as stop-gap social security rather than as a basis for accumulation. This is vital given the absence of wider welfare opportunities and declining employment possibilities in Zimbabwe, but it is no surprise that government, NGO and donor food and cash for work schemes are an important source of livelihood for a significant group in these areas.
While there are many well-meaning projects aimed at improving agriculture in the communal areas of Masvingo province – usually with a ‘climate smart’ or ‘resilience building’ tag these days – you have to wonder whether these can have any impact, beyond marginal, often very labour intensive, improvements (like ‘conservation agriculture’). The communal areas, as discussed in other blogs, are structurally poor and disadvantaged and technical tinkering will make little difference. Maybe there are some high value, niche products that can be promoted – such as has been done with chillies in some parts of the country – but our Masvingo sites are in lower rainfall areas, more remote from markets, and it may make sense.
In sum, contrasting the communal areas with the A1 resettlements demonstrates how important land redistribution is if agriculture is to become more than a marginal, subsistence activity for most.
This post is the fourth in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
“Rising to meet new challenges:
Africa’s agricultural development beyond 2020 Vision” was the theme for
the 6th African Association of Agricultural Economists
(AAAE) triennial conference, which took place on the 23-26th September
2019 at the Sheraton Hotel in Abuja, Nigeria. Professor G. B. Ayoola, the President at Farm & Infrastructure Foundation (FIF) chaired the 6th AAAE Conference Local Organising
Committee. In his opening remarks, he stated that the successive failures of agricultural policies in
Nigeria and other countries in Africa were due to inadequate technologies in
place and an unfavourable policy environment.
The AAAE conference explored the
recent developments in agricultural systems across Africa. Key drivers of
change include climate, rapid urbanisation, productivity-enhancing innovation,
population growth, the rise of agripreneurship, land reform, as well as policy
and investment priorities by governments and development partners. Attending the
conference included leading scholars, policy makers, agribusiness
representatives and development practitioners to examine how these new
mega-trends could reposition agricultural development in Africa.
The APRA
consortium is a five-year research program working to respond to these issues.
Its activities cover three streams in six focal countries across Africa, aiming
to generate new evidence on pathways to agricultural commercialisation.
APRA Nigeria and Ghana researchers were involved in a session on; ‘‘Insights into Agricultural Commercialisation in Africa: New Research Evidence and Implications for Policy’’. This session highlighted evidence on pathways into agricultural commercialisation in Sub-Saharan Africa, and included presentations on APRA research in medium-scale farms in Nigeria (Ondo and Osun states), livelihood trajectories in Nigeria’s cocoa economy, and the history of cocoa commercialisation in Ghana.
Prof. Aromolaran delivers his presentation on medium scale farms
Authors: Milu Muyanga,
Adebayo Aromolaran, TS Jayne, Saweda Liverpool-Tasie, Thomas Jayne, Titus
Awokuse.
Prof Aromolaran highlighted the need for a better understanding of the effects of changing farm size distributions to guide policies, aimed at achieving agricultural commercialisation and broader economic transformation objectives, such as improvement in food security and welfare among smallholder communities.
Prof. Thomas presented the research findings discovered that a number of things are competing for the future of cocoa in those region. In Osun there is emergence of gold mining, which is a threat to the future of cocoa. As a matter of fact people prefer to sell their fields and pull off all the cocoa trees for them to have gold.
Authors: Kodjo Amanor, Joseph Teye and Kofi T.
Asante.
The commercialisation of cocoa was
examined against the backdrop of the changing relationship between factors of
production, including: the availability of land, labour and capital, and the
interactions of these factors with technology and markets. Furthermore, the
impact upon the role of the household and family in production and in processes
of social differentiation were scrutinised.
Several posters
were presented during the session, including those which focused on “Understanding the Present from the
Past” in cocoa production. Post-graduate students from the University of Ibadan
and other universities also gave short presentations on their research findings
on Cocoa production which were given APRA funding:
Influence
of Credit Access on Household Food Security Among Cocoa Farmers in Osun State
was presented by Oluwadara D.I & Olajide,
O. Adeola.
It is tragic and outrageous that the people who produce the food that we eat in South Africa are those most likely to go hungry. Some people think that this issue can only be resolved by redistributing land. Others think that wages must improve.
But nobody has really engaged with farm workers themselves about what they would like to see for their future. This is why a national conference on the future of farm workers in South Africa will be held in October, as farm workers, academics, activists, farmers and government officials create a vision for what the future of farm workers could be.
Casualisation causes hunger
A 2014 Oxfam report found that one in four South Africans suffer from hunger, caused mainly by poverty and unemployment but also by high living costs, especially high food prices. Farm workers are one of the most vulnerable groups, despite being directly engaged in producing food. Ongoing casualisation in agriculture — which often involves the eviction of farm dwellers who lose their jobs and homes on farms — turns permanent workers into casual workers or adds them to the ranks of the unemployed. Seasonal farm workers are employed for only half the year, if they can find work at all. Job insecurity among farm workers, especially women, means they do not know if and when they will be employed, for how long, and how much they will be paid. This, in turn, generates food insecurity and anxiety about where the next meal is coming from.
A 2019 study by the Institute of Development Studies in the UK and the University of the Western Cape’s Institute for Social Development and the Centre for Excellence in Food Security found that more than 80% of farm workers in the Northern Cape face seasonal hunger during April to August. This is when there is no employment and often no source of income other than social grants. Hunger is also a severe problem in January, with Christmas bills and school fees to pay.
Food insecurity among farm workers in the Northern Cape
These statistics are shocking, but they should not be surprising. The decline in permanent agricultural employment has been ongoing for decades and is likely to continue with the introduction of fourth industrial revolution technologies such as sensors and drones. Crop yields and farmers’ profits will rise, but at the expense of farm worker employment.
Pro-worker legislation isn’t working
Farm workers face a systematic backlash by farmers whenever progressive legislation is introduced to protect and advance workers’ rights. A Women on Farms Project survey of more than 300 women farm workers in the Western Cape and Northern Cape in 2017 found that almost half were paid less than the daily minimum wage, while more than two-thirds did not have access to toilets while working in the vineyards and were not provided with protective clothes despite being exposed to pesticides. Violations of labour rights are worse in the Northern Cape than the Western Cape, among seasonal rather than permanent workers and on farms producing for local markets rather than for export.
In 2018 a national minimum wage was introduced in South Africa: it is set at R20 an hour but is only R18 an hour for farm workers. This is less than a living wage and much lower than what is needed for a household to buy a basic basket of nutritious food. Nonetheless, farmers protected themselves against paying the national minimum wage by accelerating unfair dismissals, replacing permanent workers with seasonal workers and foreign migrants, reducing the days and hours of employment or increasing daily work targets, or simply refusing to comply, relying on low levels of unionisation and infrequent and inadequate inspections by the department of labour.
The ongoing parliamentary and public debates about land expropriation without compensation have also prompted many farmers to respond with pre-emptive evictions, to ensure that no farm dwellers with claims to land will remain on their farms when legislation is implemented. In Drakenstein municipality alone, 1 200 pending farm evictions involving about 20 000 people were on the court roll in 2018.
Other farmers simply ignore the protections given to farm workers by the Extension of Security of Tenure Act and illegally chase farm dwellers off their farms, much as they did under apartheid. One illegal tactic is “constructive eviction”: refusing to maintain farm workers’ housing or even disconnecting their electricity and water supplies until living conditions become so dire that farm dwellers have no option but to leave.
When farm dwellers are legally evicted, the state usually resettles them in informal settlements. In December 2015, more than 100 individuals from 23 households were evicted from Soetendal Farm in Wellington and relocated to New Rest, an already densely populated informal settlement. Far from their former work and life on various farms, the majority are now unemployed, have lower incomes, experience greater food insecurity and have been victims of crime such as burglary and assault. In June 2018, 16-year-old Deoline Demas, whose family was one of those evicted from Soetendal, was murdered in New Rest and her burned body was dumped near a rubbish dump. Her parents contend that Deoline would still be alive today if they had not been evicted from the farm.
What is the future?
With permanent employment on farms becoming increasingly scarce and precariousness, farm worker households often depend on social grants such as the child support grant and the older persons grant, especially during the winter months. These grants are often the only reliable source of income during the off season. However, grants intended to support children and older persons are not enough to feed entire families. Seasonal farm workers are often forced to borrow money to buy food and are increasingly trapped in cycles of indebtedness, with interest rates as high as 100%.
When we recognise that seasonal farm workers are also seasonally unemployed, it is clear that more effort is needed to extend coverage of the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to farm workers who are either not registered by the farmer or do not claim their benefits. Also, because UIF benefits are limited, innovative arrangements must be found to ensure that farm workers have income and food security throughout the year.
Land expropriation without compensation offers an opportunity that farm workers hope to benefit from. Women represent only 10% of land reform beneficiaries to date, so women farm workers and dwellers are insisting that they must be prioritised when expropriated land is redistributed.Women farm workers must be involved in meaningful ways in these decision-making processes. Women need land for tenure security and food security, as well as for the dignity that arises from independent access to productive land, water and other resources. Women who work on farms want land that they will be able to leave to their children.
From October 16 to 18 a national conference on the future of farm workers in South Africa will be held at the University of the Western Cape, co-hosted by the Centre of Excellence in Food Security and the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies. The conference brings together farm workers with academics, activists, farmers and policymakers, to discuss the challenges farm workers face and brainstorm positive ways forward. The voices of farm workers will be just as much attention as academic presentations: “Nothing about us without us!”
Access to land is central to the livelihoods of rural people, but in the communal areas this is highly constrained outside the land-extensive Lowveld site of Mwenezi. Even in dryland Chivi average holdings are only 2.1 hectares, while in Gutu North they are as small as 1.4 hectares on average (see table below). The communal areas of course were established as labour reserves in the colonial period, and were never meant to afford the opportunity to accumulate independently. The aim was to provide some level of social security in old age, and a place for women and children to live, while men migrated to town or to the farms and mines to work. This wage labour was then the source of income and agricultural production just complementary subsistence.
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Average land area owned (ha)
6.5
2.1
1.6
1.4
Cultivated in last year (ha)
4.4
2.1
1.5
1.0
Rented in land (%)
4.1
2.0
1.0
0.0
Rented out land (%)
2.1
2.0
4.1
3.6
Households with members with land in A1 resettlements (%)
17.1
5.0
3.1
3.6
Households with livestock in resettlement areas (%)
11
0.4
3.1
`1.8
Women’s independent control of land (%)
48
43
48
21
Gardens near home (%)
35
26
30
6
Gardens away from home (%)
1
57
36
0
Irrigated land (% of households)
2.8
0.5
10.4
0
Trees planted in last 5 years (%)
25
46
41
58
Conservation measures added in last 5 years (%)
25
21
8
25
Some managed to break away from these strictures in the past, and there were always a few communal area agricultural entrepreneurs – the hurudza – who ran large herds or farmed large fields, often through polygamous family labour. But for most, the colonial system of land use kept the reserves poor but surviving, and purposely so. Following Independence this did not change hugely. The post-independence resettlement schemes provided opportunities for a few, but most continued with patterns of circular migration to elsewhere in Zimbabwe or from some areas to South Africa, as part of a demographic cycle. With employment opportunities drying up in the 1990s this changed thanks to structural adjustment, with new patterns of land use emerging in the communal areas including some intensification (see below). Nevertheless, the basic patterns persisted within a dualistic agrarian structure, with the communal areas highly constrained.
Only with the major land reform did this change radically with the significant expansion of opportunities to gain access to land through the ‘fast-track’ land reform programme following 2000. But from our communal sites, despite there being resettlement areas nearby (which was the basis for the choice of study areas), relatively few moved from the households in our sample to the new areas. Even when they did, apart from in Mwenezi, connections between the old homes in the communal areas and the new resettlement areas have declined over time, although there still remains important exchanges of livestock, labour and food that continue. Those lucky enough to get land in the new resettlements are doing much better: having access to land, especially in the higher potential districts of Masvingo and Gutu, makes a big difference, and as our work has shown now over many years, there are opportunities for accumulation and livelihood improvement that are significantly greater than those in the communal areas.
Overall, following land reform the communal areas remained much as they did. There was of course some reduction in population density but not enough to make a big difference. The communal areas remain extremely land constrained, and this conditions the opportunities available. With low yields and limited inputs this is not enough to live from. Since the 1980s there have been loads of projects aimed to improve agricultural production and livelihoods in the communal areas, and these continue under various banners. When living in a communal area in Zvishavane district in the mid-1980s I got involved in some of these. They certainly improved things at the margins, but the historical constraints of these being ‘labour reserves’, not agricultural areas with potential, made opportunities limited. Only with land reform did opportunities increase, and then only for some. As argued in various blogs in this series, questions must be raised about these ‘development’ interventions: do they really make a difference?
Gardens and homefields: new patterns of agriculture in the communal areas
In addition to their main land holdings many people in the communal areas also have gardens. As more intensive areas of production, these have often been the focus for intervention but usually as group efforts rather than individual enterprises. Gardens can be near the home or further away near a suitable water source. Apart from Gutu North, where gardens seem to be (surprisingly) few, between 83% and 36% of households have such gardens. These tend to small, usually less than 0.1 ha, and irrigated mostly by hand, with most vegetables for home consumption (see other blogs). Most are managed by women, and such gardens are an important source of relish year round.
With the exception of Gutu North, where land is especially constrained, about 40-50% of lead women in the households have access to land in their own right. This is not necessarily because of being the household head (because a husband is deceased or they have divorced), as so-called female headed households make around a quarter of the sample, but through household level arrangements as part of the marriage bargain. In most cases, this is in relation to the allocation of certain land – including gardens – to women for sole management. Very often this involves particular crops, including groundnuts, Bambara nuts and so on.
The availability of irrigation plots depends on the proximity of a government scheme or an organised ‘group garden’. Unlike in the resettlement areas, particularly in Masvingo district, people have not invested in small-scale irrigation, but if there is a scheme some from a household may get a 0.1 ha plot. Overall the numbers are small, however, and this is not a big part of land use or production, despite these being dry areas. Irrigation schemes have long been a central pillar of investment in the communal areas, but they have tended to be focused on giving a larger number of irrigators just enough irrigated land, and this is not a driver of accumulation like the small, private initiatives in the resettlement areas, which have taken over the land along rivers, streams and around dams. Schemes are also prone to difficulties, as they are reliant on pumping equipment that often breaks down or ceases when power is not supplied. Many also resent the disciplining effects of scheme requirements, with specified rotations, crop choices and so on, under the control of an irrigation scheme extension officer.
Outside the Lowveld, there has been a shift in allocation in land in the communal areas, which has gendered implications. Very often the total land area is divided between homestead areas, often extensions of the home plot to include land around, and outfields which are the ‘traditional’ fields allocated way back in line with the Native Land Husbandry Act rules, where settlements (lines) and fields were separated in the land use plan. With more people and more land cultivated this separation has broken down and very often the outfields are seen as secondary. They are further away, more difficult to protect and require extensive production, which may not be possible because of lack of draft animals and labour. By contrast the homefields are a focus for more intensive production, using home waste, ash and labour from the home. These are often based on intensive garden production, often with hoes and hand irrigation, in small areas, and very often are the domain of women. Per hectare, productivity is much higher and from these small areas the main production is realised.
This is different to the nearby A1 resettlement areas that, in the villagised sites, have been planned in a similar way to the old ‘reserves’, with settlement separated from grazing. Here there may be small home gardens, but the main farming is done in the now cleared outfields. This is quite a different operation because of the scale, the level of inputs and the outputs expected, with different gender implications. While women are heavily involved in agricultural production, outfield farming is usually led by male heads of household, while women often focus on gardening.
Indeed, because of lack of inputs, notably labour (often because of age and infirmity) the outfields may not even be cultivated. For example, in the land-scarce area of Gutu North, on average 0.4 ha of a total of 1.4 ha, over a quarter, was left fallow across two relatively good rainfall years. In the resettlement areas there is also land left fallow, but this is usually because the land area is too big or it has not been completely cleared for ploughing by oxen or tractor.
These (relatively) new patterns of land utilisation in the communal areas, with the focus on a more garden-like form of production in the home fields, also affect the market in land rentals and sales (notionally illegal). In other parts of the country where production is more reliable because of better rainfall the emergence of ‘vernacular markets’ in land have been widely documented. You might expect that, given land scarcity, even if land exchanges are banned, these would emerge in these sites, with those able to make better use of land either buying up or renting in land.
The data show that this is not happening in the way that would be expected, as few rent out and rent in, and no one admitted to land sales. This may of course be a bias in the data, as people do not like to admit illegal activity, but based on our more qualitative research the data probably reflect the existing situation. Bottom line, as discussed in earlier blogs, people don’t have the resource to make a go of agriculture even on expanded plots, and so the demand for land, except at the margins (and usually around particular better quality patches near homesteads), is not high, and land markets are limited.
While areas are small and production limited, investment in particular areas continues. This is demonstrated by the planting of trees (mostly for fruit, sometimes for shade) and the expansion or rehabilitation of conservation measures (mostly contour ridges to reduce erosion). Tree planting, unsurprisingly, increases along the rainfall gradient from Mwenezi to Gutu North, with the most households recording planting trees where the land is most densely populated and the rainfall higher. Investment in conservation measures was noted by around a quarter of households, with the exception of Gutu West (for reasons that are not clear). This shows that there remains a commitment amongst a significant minority in sustaining production for the long term.
Tenure challenges
Investment, rental markets and so on happens despite these areas being under ‘communal tenure’. Some argue that a reform of tenure systems, and the offering of some form of private tenure will improve tenure security and increase production in the communal areas. I seriously doubt whether this will be the case. Despite this notionally being state land, these areas are held securely with usufruct rights, allocated through local institutions, usually a hybrid arrangement between local state officials (councillors etc.) and ‘traditional’ leaders (headmen, chiefs etc.), with allocation and inheritance processes mediated by close kin networks in extended household arrangements in family based villages. Through such arrangements land rentals are permitted, but sales are seriously frowned upon. This puts a brake on an acceleration of land sales and so land consolidation, although the odd corrupt local leader is not immune of course.
In the communal areas, therefore, a mix of de facto private and common property exists, which is recognised not formalised. A hybrid bricolage of informal and formal institutions supports this, which by and large serves the function of delivering land security to land holders, as well as resolving conflicts and disputes over land. It is not neat – there are no bits of paper to formalise it all – but it (mostly) works. The economists and planners who yearn for formalised systems will I fear be disappointed, as the constraint to production is nothing to do with tenure security, but due to structural constraints of finance, assets and land access. These will not be addressed by an expensive land tenure reform programme, which will, as so many places in Africa, be a wasted effort.
In the nearby A1 resettlement areas, the situation is different. There are fewer, long-standing local institutions and local kin networks to regulate land administration, and more formal systems are often required (although these are always hybrid combining resettlement committees of seven, war veterans, party officials and traditional leaders, sometimes involving the same people), to address land allocation, subdivision and inheritance, particular where there disputes. Unlike in the communal areas, where the land is being held as ‘home’, and production is limited, there are different stakes in the resettlement areas.
Here land is more extensive and valuable, and often significant levels of production are realised. Ensuring security for this is essential. For the A1 areas, this is less of a problem, but for the A2 medium-scale farms of, where finance for investment is vital, having a more formal arrangement so that land can be used as collateral, even through a lease agreement with the state, is important. For A1 areas, ‘offer letters’ or permits to occupy are issued, but their status remains unclear, especially in regard of financing.
The failure to address these land tenure issues comprehensively, but in a nuanced and differentiated manner, post-land reform has been a major policy failing, as discussed before on this blog. The priorities though must be addressing A2 leases, not communal area tenure reorganisation, where lack of land makes opportunities for development extremely limited. Communal areas still act in many respects as ‘the reserves’, but now without the labour in the wider economy. Beyond some marginal improvements, communal area livelihoods are not going to improve without an improvement in the wider economy. The focus for land-based interventions therefore must be elsewhere where the prospects are better.
This post is the third in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
Since Zimbabwe’s land reform of 2000 – when around 8 million hectares of formerly large-scale commercial farmland was distributed to about 175,000 households – debates about the consequences for food security have raged.
A standard narrative has been that Zimbabwe has turned from “food basket” to “basket case”. This year, following the devastating El Niño drought combined with Cyclone Idai, some 5.5 million people are estimated to be at risk of hunger, with international agencies issuing crisis and emergency alerts.
It is unquestionable that this season was disastrous – only 776,635 tonnes of maize was produced, more than a third below the five-year average. Nevertheless, the story of food insecurity is more complex than the headline figures suggest.
It’s true that Zimbabwe’s food economy has been transformed over the past 19 years. Aggregate production of maize has certainly declined, and imports have become more frequent.
But Zimbabwe suffered food shortages, often precipiated by El Niño events, before land reform. These too led to the need for more imports. And surpluses have also been produced since land reform. For example, in 2017, there was a bumper crop. Some of it was stored and has been used to keep people going.
Getting behind the headline figures and understanding an increasingly complex food economy is essential. Our on-going research shows just how complicated the picture is.
Farming and food
Since land reform, we have been tracking livelihood change in resettlement areas in a number of sites across the country. Our research is exploring how people have fared since getting land, asking who is doing well and not so well, and why. Some of our key findings include:
Crop production is higher in the land reform areas compared to the communal lands. Larger land areas allows new settlers to produce, invest and accumulate.
There are substantial hidden flows of food between land reform areas and poor rural and urban areas, as successful resettlement farmers provide food for relatives, or sell food informally.
There is a significant growth of small-scale, farmer-led irrigation in resettlement areas. This is often not recognised, as production occurs on disparate small plots, frequently farmed by younger people without independent homes.
Trade in food across regions and borders, facilitated by networks of traders, often women, is significant, but unrecorded.
Market networks following land reform are complex and informal, linking producers to traders and small urban centres in new ways. Outside formal channels, the volume and flows of food through the system is difficult to trace.
Simple aggregate analyses of food deficits, estimating the numbers of people at risk of food insecurity, do not capture these new dynamics. National surveys are important, but may be misleading, and local studies, such as ours, often do not match the national, aggregate picture.
So, what is going on?
Access to food: complex relationships
Food insecurity is not just about production, it is also about access. This is affected by the value of assets when sold, the ease with which things can be bought and sold in markets, the value of cash as influenced by currency fluctuations and inflation, local and cross-border trade opportunities, and all the social, institutional and cultural dimensions that go into exchange.
When these dimensions change, so does food security. And this is particularly true for certain groups.
Take the case of Zvishavane district, in Midlands province of Zimbabwe. In the communal area of Mazvihwa, there was effectively no production this season. Some got a little if they had access to wetlands, and a few had stores. But compared to 30 years ago, production is focused on maize, which stores poorly, rather than small grains that can be kept for years.
How are people surviving? Some seek piecework in the nearby resettlement areas; others have taken up seasonal gold panning; others migrate to town, or further afield; others get help from relatives through remittances; while others are in receipt of cash transfers or food hand-outs from NGOs.
With small amounts of cash, people must buy food. It’s available in shops, but expensive. So a vibrant trade has emerged, with exchanges of maize grain for sugar or other products. And it’s especially people from the land reform areas who are selling their surpluses. Many have relatives who got land, and some travel there to get food, but there is also a network of women traders who come and sell in the communal areas.
Aggregate surveys almost always miss this complexity. There are sampling biases, as the importance of the resettlements as sites of production and exchange are missed.
There are data problems too, as it is difficult to pick up informal exchanges, and income-earning activities on the margins. The result is that each year there are big food insecurity figures proclaimed, fund-raising campaigns launched, but meanwhile people get on with surviving.
This is not to say that there is not a problem this year. Far from it. But it may be a different one to that diagnosed.
Economic collapse is causing a humanitarian crisis
As the Zimbabwean economy continues to deteriorate, with rapidly-rising inflation, parallel currency rates, and declining service provision, whether electricity, fuel or water, the challenges of market exchange and trade become more acute. Barter trade is more common, as prices fluctuate wildly and the value of physical and electronic money diverge. With poor mobile phone networks due to electricity outages, electronic exchange becomes more difficult too.
Collapsing infrastructure has an effect on production also. Fuel price hikes make transport prohibitive and irrigation pumps expensive to run. Desperate measures by government often make matters worse. The now-rescinded edict that all grain must be supplied to the state grain marketing board undermined vital informal trade. Meanwhile, the notoriously corrupt “command agriculture” subsidy scheme directs support to some, while excluding others from the provision of favourable loans for government-supplied seed, fertiliser, fuel or equipment.
Economic and infrastructural collapse is threatening food security in Zimbabwe. Even if there is good rainfall this season, the crisis will persist. Farmers will plant, produce and market less this year. While food imports are needed for targeted areas and population groups for sure, this may not be the biggest challenge.
Stabilising Zimbabwe’s economy is the top priority, as economic chaos is causing a humanitarian crisis.
The last blog introduced this blog series on communal area development in Zimbabwe, and the comparisons with resettlement areas. This week’s blog continues the series with a look at the distribution of assets people have and their importance in building livelihoods.
Our four communal area sites across Masvingo province each have highly differentiated populations. We undertook a ‘success ranking’ in each, where local informants allocated each of the 608 households in our sample to a group (doing well, doing OK and failing), and explained the reasons behind their choice. In each case there was a majority in the bottom two categories, with relatively few in the top success group.
What were the criteria they used? These varied between sites. In the dryland areas of the Lowveld, cattle ownership was the key, alongside off-farm work, reflecting the importance of migration to South Africa in household economies. In the Gutu sites, crop production became more of an indicator, alongside remittances and formal jobs. In all sites ‘a good home’ (usually meaning a brick house, with a tin roof) was an important criterion.
What then are the characteristics of the households in our four sites? The table below offers some basic information.
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Sample size (N)
150
251
97
110
Since 2011, % left and abandoned farms
6.3
13.4
14.9
9.8
Average household size
8.0 (4 under 16)
6.2 (3.1 under 16)
6 (2.3)
6.1 (2.3)
Female headed households (%)
23
27
36
34
Households w members who went to resettlement areas post 2000 (%)
11.3
1.9
3.1
3.6
Households with someone working elsewhere
55
25
45
21
Households with children aged 21-30 working elsewhere
63% (half in SA)
27% (inc. 13 working abroad)
27% (only 5 away from area)
41 (8 away, mostly SA)
Lead women in household with access to land (%)
48
43
48
21
Average age of household head
41-50
41-50
41-50
41-50
Household heads attending school above Form 2 (%)
29
26
32
37
Master Famer certificate (%)
14
13
27
26
Since our original studies, there has been a turnover in households, with 11.2% of our cases (N=77) from our original sample of 685 households having left over six years, with no one replacing them. Various reasons for exit were recorded. In rank order these were: death, moving to live in town, moving to other communal areas, moving to South Africa, abandonment and moving to a resettlement area. Ageing communal area populations are not necessarily being replaced on death, as the younger generation does not take up the homestead or plot, and the land remains abandoned. Due to old age, some parents, especially if one has passed on, will go and live with children in town or the new resettlements. Younger inhabitants may also abandon plots too, finding better alternatives, for example with work in South Africa or in town, or through the allocation of a resettlement plot. The highest rate of exit was seen in Gutu West, followed by Chivi, Gutu North and Mwenezi. In Mwenezi, some maintain two homes and fields in the communal and resettlement areas, which is reflected in a lower exit rate.
For those remaining, the data show a pattern evident in many communal areas. Household heads have a mix of ages, with an average in the mid-late 40s. Quite a few household heads have passed on since we last visited in 2011-12; although some farms have been abandoned, others have been replaced by younger people through inheritance or reallocation. 23-36% of the households are recorded as female-headed, where husbands have died or are absent for long periods. Outside Gutu North, where land is especially constrained, 43-48% of women, either because they are in charge or through the marriage contract, have access to their own land.
As is the case throughout Zimbabwe, and especially for those who benefited from the post-1980 educational provision, schooling is on average quite advanced, more so in the mission influenced areas such as Gutu, where 32-37% of household heads attended secondary school. Master Farmer certificates are indicators or engagement with agricultural extension training provided by the state, particularly in the past, and 13-27% of households have a certificate, with more in the higher potential Gutu areas. As discussed in a later blog in this series, engagement with projects – by NGOs or donors or the state – is patchy, with intensive activity in some areas, but almost complete absence elsewhere. These data show that external interventions overall are limited, and very few people indeed benefited from the Presidential inputs scheme or ‘command agriculture’ in this period.
Asset poor, but differentiation
Across our communal area sites in Masvingo province, there is a broad similarity in average levels of average household asset ownership, as the table below shows. Not surprisingly, livestock ownership is highest in the drier areas, as is investment in well digging. Within the sites there are large variations, with asset ownership patterns being highly correlated with the success ranks discussed above. Some assets are widely owned, such as a brick house with a tin roof, as well as ploughs, cell phones and bicycles. Others differentiate the group more, including cattle, tractor and car ownership.
Mwenezi
Chivi
Gutu West
Gutu North
Land owned (ha)
6.5
2.1
1.6
1.4
% households dug well in last 5 years
14
2
2
8
Cattle owned (nos)
7.6
4.0
3.1
3.7
Households with brick/tin roof house (%)
89
80
69
86
Plough ownership (%)
52
45
30
37
Harrows (%)
10
34
22
65
Cultivators
12
23
26
16
Cart ownership (%)
50
21
10
24
Wheelbarrow owned
41
50
21
25
Car ownership (%)
13
5
10
8
Tractor ownership (%)
13
0
0
0
Bicycle ownership (%)
45
32
36
43
Solar panel ownership (%)
75
57
69
47
Cell phone ownership (%)
87
92
89
91
TVs owned (%)
23
25
44
30
Pumps owned (%)
5
1
2
2
Spray equipment owned (%)
22
35
21
15
Levels of asset ownership are lower on average in the communal areas compared to the nearby A1 schemes, although there are exceptions in both directions. The key difference of course in the A1 schemes is land ownership, where households cultivate 4.0-6.6 ha of land in the sites nearby, and there is much more extensive grazing. This is associated with accumulation from crop and livestock production and so investment in other productive and service assets. Again, this is not universal, but whereas perhaps 5-10% of households in the communal areas (the top of our success group 1) are able to accumulate from local production, this increases to 30-40% in the A1 areas next door.
People’s capacities are broadly similar (A1 resettlement area populations are on average slightly younger and a bit more educated), but it’s access to assets that make the difference. Land redistribution in particular has made a big difference for many. While in the communal areas there is a long tail of asset and income poor households in need of external support, through remittances, off-farm work and state/donor aid, with only a few able to accumulate through farm-based production, in the A1 resettlements this pattern is reversed and there is much more development potential driven by ‘accumulation from below’ for at least a third of households. For them, a positive upward cycle is generated, as agricultural surpluses allow reinvestment in productive assets, and so potentials for greater accumulation, while others aspire to create such opportunities.
As discussed in later blogs, this has important implications for rural development options, with investment in productive, agriculture-based development possible in the resettlements (focused on ‘stepping up’ livelihoods), but much less so in the communal areas, where a focus on exit to non-farm livelihoods (‘stepping out’) and social protection (‘hanging in’) must dominate.
This post is the second in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge
There is a dark tension at the heart of development-oriented crop and soil science. It pits systematic research, respect for evidence, and incremental improvement, against the imperative to construct and claim success and impact ‘at scale’. This tension can be analysed from a political economy perspective, as individuals, research organisations, funders, corporations and a raft of other actors vie for media attention, budget allocations and influence in the context of an increasing preoccupation with food system sustainability. While this perspective is surely valuable, the long-standing obsession with game changing agricultural technology – often promoted as nothing less than ‘miraculous’ – and the religious imagery underpinning it, must also be recognised.
Stairway to heaven
There is a small but growing literature that explores links between religious faith, agronomic science, and development.* One strand of this literature examines the instrumental use of God in narratives to promote particular agricultural technologies: conservation agriculture being promoted as ‘Farming God’s way’ in parts of southern Africa is a case in point.
To date however, the more miraculous side of development-oriented agronomy has received little attention. While perhaps not so impressive as multiplying bread and fish to feed the hungry, or turning water into wine, agronomic miracles have been declared on a regular basis. In the 1970s it was Norman Borlaug’s ‘miracle wheat’, and since then there has been a series of ‘miracle trees’ (including species such as Leucaena, Prosopis, Jatropha and Moringa), the ‘miracle of the Cerrado’, and golden ‘miracle rice’, to name just a few.
In the discursive construction of agronomic miracles, tagging something as ‘promising’ – as in, a ‘promising maize variety’ or a ‘promising technology’ – is a critical first step. It creates what we might think of as a scaffold or stairway of expectation to support future proclamations of miraculous performance or impact. But what exactly is being promised, by whom and to whom? On what basis is the elusive quality ‘promising’ identified? And what criteria are used to justify the graduation of a promising technology to a miraculous one? These questions are seldom asked.
Miracles ahead, miracles behind
A closer look suggests that two types of miracles are associated with development-oriented agronomy. The first – the post hoc miracle – is akin to a conventional miracle in that it is declared following the miraculous event. The ‘miracle of the Cerrado’ in Brazil is a good example of a post-hoc miracle. While much about the Cerrado story is contested, it is undeniable that significant change occurred. The Green Revolution is another classic example of a post-hoc miracle. The second type is the ex-ante miracle, which is declared in anticipation of an expected future event or development. Golden, high beta-carotene, ‘miracle’ rice, and Leucaena, the fast growing, leguminous, ‘miracle’ tree, are prime examples of ex-ante miracles. However, as is the case with most ex-ante miracles, neither golden rice nor Leucaena have ever delivered anything like the miraculous agronomic or development outcomes that were so confidently proclaimed.
Problems with miracles
Being too good to be true, unexplainable, if not unbelievable, is fundamental to the notion of miracle. In principle then, miracles should not sit easily in the scientific, rational, evidence-based world of agricultural research. So, is the well-established tradition of miracle-making in development-oriented agronomy to be brushed aside as little more than harmless self-promotion? Is it, perhaps, no different than the promotion of broccoli, acai berry or quinoa as ‘miracle’ or ‘super’ foods? Is this all just harmless word play? Far from it!
Anointing the Green Revolution or the development of the Cerrado as miracles obliterates the alternative visions, years of work, false starts, investment, struggle and contestation – and the wide array of associated goods and bads – that characterised these complex socio-technical and environmental processes. While the resulting changes in agrarian relations, landscapes, productivity and the like might rightly be described as dramatic or fundamental, these changes reflect the work of women and men here on earth, not the hand of God. In this sense, they were anything but miraculous. So, the first problem with agronomic miracles is that they do away with both history and the social nature of technological change, including politics. These aspects of the relationship between agricultural research and agrarian change deserve more, not less attention.
The second problem arises from the articulation of miracles and scale. From a development impact perspective any notion of a ‘micro-miracle’ misses the point entirely: by their very nature, agronomic miracles deliver impact ‘at scale’. This articulation thus offers hope to those who are desperate for easily ‘scalable solutions’. Talk of agronomic miracles feeds the same misplaced and unrealistic instincts associated with development’s long history of (misplaced) faith in silver bullets and one-size-fits-all solutions.
The importance of religion within development is increasingly recognised, and we certainly appreciate and respect the fact that religion plays a central part in the lives of people around the globe. However, given the challenges involved in moving food systems – and the agricultural systems that underpin them – onto a more sustainable footing, there is much to fear from the emergence of faith-based agronomy.
APRA Nigeria has received a boost following the creation of
a new advisory board, at Rockview Hotel, Abuja on September 27, 2019.
APRA Nigeria Workstream 1 Research Team (WS1) aims to study
the potential opportunities and challenges associated with medium-scale
(investor) farms as a pathway into agricultural commercialisation. The research
is being conducted in conjunction with Michigan State University (MSU), who are
leading policy studies on Agricultural Commercialisation Synergies and
Trade-offs between Small-scale and Medium-scale farms in Nigeria. The purpose
of the advisory board is for APRA Nigeria research output to be converted into
policies, which advocate for effective implementation towards improving
household livelihoods in the APRA research study states of Ogun and Kaduna.
The advisory body was inaugurated by APRA Chair, Prof. Titus
Awokuse, MSU, who will work closely with the APRA-MSU research team in order
for them to influence agricultural and
food policies to enhance agricultural commercialisation and smallholders
transformation through the growth of medium/large scale farms.
“We are using Ogun and Kaduna states as study sites to
understand the typology of commercialisation, including opportunities and
constraint,’’ said Prof. Soji Adelaja, MSU, and WS1 researcher. He also stated that
the APRA Nigeria WS1 research aims to generate an inclusive set of information from
stakeholders in the agriculture value chain, in addition to how land
acquisition, agricultural produce-processing and marketing can be translated to
wealth creation.
Prof. Aromolaran addresses the group
WS1 Country Coordinator, Prof. Adebayo Aromolaran,
emphasised that in order to promote the growth of medium-scale farms in
Nigeria, policy needed to effectively address the issue of low land tenure
security, low access to land markets by prospective investors, and low youth
engagement in farming. He added that advisory
board members were in a position to influence the distribution of government
and private sector resources to effectively implement policies arising from
APRA research output.
Prof. Thom Jayne, MSU, and lead Principal Investigator of the APRA-MSU research team, informed the board that APRA is conducting similar research in Tanzania, Malawi, Ghana, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, and stated that he hoped that improved commercialisation policy could enable better wealth and job creation for small and medium-scale farmers.
Oil palm production has been a lifelong activity for many farmers in south-western Ghana. Although oil palm could be harvested throughout the year, production peaks from January to May. Like other crops of this nature, one would expect prices to fall or rise with production quantities. However, this is not always the case, as the big oil palm companies in the area (Norpalm Ghana Ltd. and Benso Oil Palm Plantation Ltd.) often succeed in fixing prices so they are not as upwardly flexible as one would expect. Many farmers are of the view that processing their own oil palm is more profitable than selling to the big companies or on the open market. But who is able to take advantage of the real or apparent higher profits offered by self-processing? This question provides an opportunity to explore livelihood outcomes and empowerment using the livelihood schema of ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’, and ‘stepping out’.[1]
Hanging In
For some oil palm farmers, low initial resource endowments including small land holdings seems to hinder them from expanding their farms or diversifying into other crops. They are also unable to process or to acquire processing machines. This category of farmers seem trapped in small-scale oil palm production, with little hope of taking off either through increased production or processing.
Stepping Up
Other oil palm farm households have initial endowments (including land) that allow them to expand their oil palm farms, process their own fruits, as well as diversify into rubber and cocoa production. Some of these farm households not only process fruits from their own farms but are also able to buy fruits from other farmers. A large share of farm households in this category also serve as agents who link smallholders to the large oil palm companies through oil palm fruit sales. There are a few farm households in the villages who also invest in artisanal palm fruit processing machines and process for others for a fee. They then invest some of their earnings into expanding both their farms and the processing activities. The ability to store the processed palm oil for sale during the lean season makes a big difference in profit margins obtained from processing. Households that are able to store oil palm for the lean season are those that are engaged in non-farm income generating activities.
A private processing mill at Butre Photo credit: Prince Selorm Tetteh
Stepping Out
There is little evidence of farm households stepping out in the communities. However, there are households where woman specialise in trading while men focus on oil palm farming. Income from both activities complement each other and so could be described more as diversification and pluriactivity rather than stepping out. In terms of stepping out of oil palm production, there is an emerging trend of farm households of all types cutting their palm oil trees to plant rubber and or cocoa. The farmers are motivated by the fact that rubber and cocoa are more lucrative than oil palm. Additionally, for cocoa especially, the state supports farmers from production to marketing, and the Ghana Rubber Company Limited (GREL) incentivise farmers who transition into rubber production. Besides, individual business people enter into profit agreements with farmers who give out their lands for rubber production. Farmers also compared the labour and input needs of oil palm with rubber or cocoa and concluded that the latter two offered less hassle. Furthermore, while the maturity period of an oil palm tree is 25 years, after which a farmer must start again, they maintained that the longevity of cocoa is 60 years and above and that rubber is forever.
Replacement of oil palm with rubber trees Photo credit: Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey/ Dorothy Takyiakwaa at Kwesikrom, Western Region of Ghana
Oil Palm Processing Dynamics
While oil palm processing is viewed as more lucrative than fruit production, the (in)ability to do so depends on a number of structural and individual/household level factors. The structural factors include a lack of processing machines, absence of water in communities, bad road networks – which affects marketing, the labour intensity of rudimentary processing, and low pricing of the oil. The wider socioeconomic linkages in specific areas is also a structural issue relevant for rural growth. Communities with many processing facilities, whether home-based or factory-types, also have a thriving non-farm employment sector. From the perspective of some community members, the presence of the large oil palm companies has ‘destroyed’ oil palm processing skills and innovation, and has made people ‘lazy’. Although the oil palm farmers desired to process their own oil, the gradual decline of artisanal oil palm processing due to the presence of big companies is a certainly a hindrance. In sum, social differentiation and resource endowment are significant determinants of the (in)ability to process palm fruit into oil palm.
[1]Dorward, Andrew, Simon Anderson, Yolanda Nava Bernal, Ernesto Sánchez Vera, Jonathan Rushton, James Pattison, and Rodrigo Paz. 2009. “Hanging in, stepping up and stepping out: livelihood aspirations and strategies of the poor.” Development in Practice no. 19 (2):240-247. doi: 10.1080/09614520802689535.
Written by Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey and Fred Mawunyo Dzanku
Communal areas are where the majority of rural people live in Zimbabwe. With an estimated population of 1.1 million households and a land area of 16.4 million hectares, these areas far exceed those allocated land in the resettlements. This blog has largely focused on what has happened in the post 2000 land reform resettlements, which amount to around 8 million ha with about 175,000 households across A1 and A2 areas. But what about the relations between these areas; what are the implications for development?
This is the first in a series of nine blogs that will run over the next weeks that reflects on the situation in the communal areas, and compares this to resettlement areas, based on our on-going research in Masvingo province.
As argued on this blog before, Zimbabwe’s ‘second republic’ must focus on rural development if the economy is to be regenerated and livelihoods are to be sustained. In 2018, rural people voted en masse for ZANU-PF (outside parts of Manicaland and Matabeleland North), so the party must deliver. So far it is failing. But in order to deliver, policymakers need to understand the constraints, challenges and opportunities of rural settings.
In the past, this blog has identified a range of policy priorities, and suggested some key requirements for land policy in particular, mostly focused on the ‘new’ resettlements. Too often politicians and those based in urban areas or the diaspora dismiss rural areas as backward and desperate, mired in poverty. Alternatively such places are idealised as ‘the village’, where traditions are sustained. But these places are complex, with diverse populations, and with different needs.
A1 resettlements vs communal areas: big contrasts
To shed light on some of these issues, I have been delving into the data we collected in 2017-18 in a number of communal areas in Masvingo. Each site is close to one of our long-term A1 sites that we have been tracking since the early 2000s. Our sites therefore range from dryland areas in the Lowveld to relatively higher potential areas in Masvingo and Gutu districts further north.
As discussed in an earlier blog series, we are interested in whether the land reform areas, with larger land allocations, more assets and a different population profile, are doing better than their communal area neighbours, or whether the A1 areas are essentially an extension of communal area poverty and underdevelopment.
Our earlier analysis found on nearly all criteria that the A1 areas were doing better. Significant numbers of people were accumulating, and investing in productive assets on their farms. Six years on, what has happened? We returned to the same sites and households in Mwenezi district, Chivi, Gutu West and Gutu North.
The blogs that follow will look at a sample of 608 households (excluding 77 farms that had been abandoned since 2011-12). In particular they will examine land and its use, crop and livestock production and marketing, differentiated asset ownership and investment, labour hiring and employment, as well as the range of off-farm income earning activities in these communal areas, comparing them with our findings from the adjacent resettlement areas in our core study.
The data reveal variations across and within sites, showing differentiation by location and across social groups. The characterisation of these areas as poor holds up, but we also see great enterprise and diversity of livelihoods. Some are able to invest relatively limited returns in new assets (the numbers of cars purchased in some areas was a surprise, as was the number of tractors in Mwenezi) and, despite the state of the public education system, many prioritise paying for school fees as a core expenditure from crop and livestock sales.
Comparing the data to those in the A1 areas nearby, however, we do not see sustained accumulation from farm production, and reliance on external support, including remittances and off-farm work, is the norm. Hiring of labour is limited and a dynamic economy driven by agriculture is not evident. For sure, there are a few who are doing well – those with large herds of cattle in the dryland areas, or those able to produce significant quantities of maize in the higher rainfall areas. These are the ‘hurudza’ of contemporary times and are important people within kin and village networks, supporting others. But the data show these isolated cases and, in everywhere but Mwenezi, not part of a wider economic dynamism.
Because of large land areas, Mwenezi is in some ways more like a resettlement area, with opportunities for accumulation seen if rainfall is good (as was the case in the two years we have recent data for), as crop yields on the relatively good Lowveld soils can be substantial. With grazing plentiful, livestock production is possible too, and proximity to the border with South Africa means trading and jobs across the border is also an option. As the data show, Mwenezi is in some respects a different economic system – more variable, but with greater opportunity – compared with the more conventional, highly resource constrained communal area sites to the north.
Links to the resettlement areas: a territorial perspective
In our interviews, we discussed the links between the four communal areas and the resettlements nearby. The results are interesting. They highlight both cooperative and conflictive relationships. The land reform areas are seen as sources of food (to purchase or via support from relatives), grazing (either through loaning arrangements of animals from the communal area to relatives or others in the resettlement or where surplus grazing can be made use of by communal area cattle) and work (through labour hiring practices of the new farmers). These areas, reclaimed through land reform, are also important for culture and identity. In all cases people identified sites where people have been reconnected with religious and grave sites, previously protected as part of private land under the control of large-scale commercial farmers.
Conflicts also occur, and disputes over grazing access and boundaries were highlighted most frequently. Given that there are many people in the resettlements who originally come from the nearby communal areas, conflicts are usually resolved easily. When things escalate, local councillors, and even the police are drawn upon. Many resettlement sites originally had surplus resources, with fewer people and large grazing areas. This is changing as populations grow and more people settle (often illegally) in the resettlements, so disputes are increasing, people say.
Seeing the communal areas as part of a wider economic system is important. These areas were established originally in the colonial era as ‘labour reserves’. With the collapse of the wider economy and the change in the employment market since structural adjustment in the 1990s, the relationships between the rural and urban, and the role of circular migration has changed.
Today, communal areas now must be seen more in terms of their relationships with surrounding land use and economic activity – notably the linkages with both A1 and A2 resettlements, and the small towns, now often booming, that are in rural areas. With the removal of the stark separation between large-scale, mostly white-owned commercial farms and the communal areas removed, the racial, political landscape has changed. This has important implications for economic development.
As several blogs in this series argue – and as has been discussed here before – thinking about local economic development is key. The communal areas may be too poor to develop by themselves, but as a source of labour, markets, service needs and some production, they are important in local economies. Development planning and investment needs to take a wider view, and not just invest in small agricultural projects in communal areas in the hope of a transformation, but think about linkages, synergies and connections, in ways that connect communal areas with resettlements and small towns.
In the forthcoming blogs, I will discuss these questions in relation to particular themes. The bottom line is that investing in production, marketing and economic growth in most communal areas is severely constrained. Where these opportunities open up is when we look at the communal area in relation to the land reform areas nearby, as part of a spatial, territorial approach to economic development. Communal areas are certainly poor, but not too poor for development: thinking more broadly about linkages and connections across a territory is essential.
This post is the first in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge.
APRA was recently represented by Dr Fred Dzanku, research
fellow at the University of Ghana’s Institute of Statistical, Social &
Economic Research, as one of eight keynote speakers at the biennial
Agricultural Research for Development Conference, Agri4D 2019 held on 25-26
September in Uppsala, Sweden.
“The overall goal of
my presentation was to stimulate thinking about how rural development policy
and practice can help accelerate poverty reduction in rural sub-Saharan Africa,
and what role a reduction in village-specific agricultural productivity gaps
could play. Today, sub-Saharan Africa imports approximately US$35 billion worth
of food annually (or about 2.3% of the continent’s agricultural GDP in 2018).
While this is worrying and calls for increased agricultural productivity, I
emphasised the need to go beyond thinking about just on-farm productively
increases to thinking that encompasses profitability and sustainability,” Fred
explains.
Fred continues “This means we need to think critically about how to remove barriers to increased productivity, profitability, and sustainability concurrently. After all, African agriculture faces multiple constraints and an approach that does not address all these constraints together is likely to fail. For example, Ghana’s current flagship program for the agriculture sector dubbed ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ is laudable but will fail if it focuses disproportionately on the supply of seeds and fertilisers, as it currently does, without addressing the challenges of agricultural water supply (irrigation) and marketing. Thus, so long as the constraints of liquidity, risk, information, and access to markets remain, farmers will have little incentive for increasing yields.”
While at the conference, Fred also took the opportunity to highlight APRA’s work, displaying a poster showing APRA’s scope of work and how it related to the broad conference objective. He also answered questions from participants on APRA’s current work. “I hope that findings from APRA research can be presented at the Agri4D conference in 2021”, he says.
More information about the conference can be found here
Please note: The deadline for submitting a concept note for this call for papers has now passed.
1. Introduction
Following the shocking and untimely loss of Ephraim Wadonda Chirwa on 15 July 2019, the Department of Economics (DOE) of the University of Malawi will soon produce a special issue of the Malawi Journal of Economics (MAJE) which it publishes in collaboration with the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM). MAJE is an outlet for high quality research articles focusing on economic theory and the application of analytical techniques to a wide range of issues in economics. The journal is of special appeal to academics, students, policy makers, development experts and others interested in the Malawian and global economies.
It is not practically possible to present the rationale for this especial issue exhaustively. Ephraim’s illustrious contribution to the body of knowledge in economics and related studies may never be easily matched in the foreseeable future. MAJE, for which he is a founding member and first editor-in-chief, is a befitting medium to summarise his vast scholarly work and impactful contribution to academia. The special issue will not only be part of the DOE’s endless gratitude to the glittering character, true professional and selfless mentor that is Ephraim, but also part of our effort to preserve his legacy, so that future generations of students, scholars, other experts and policy-makers will live to envy those of us who have had the privilege of learning from him directly and otherwise.
2. Approach
The special issue will be a thematic exposition of Ephraim’s work. At least one paper will be produced under each of the following themes:
Industrial policy and private sector development
Agricultural policy, agricultural markets, food security and nutrition
Poverty and social protection
Financial development and resource mobilisation
Economic reforms, neo-liberalism and aid
In general, the papers under each theme should:
a) summarise the works, focusing on the analytics and key findings;
b) provide a critic of the works by bringing out areas of consensus and debate;
c) bring out Ephraim’s contribution to the body of knowledge; and
d) unearth directions for further research
Authors are encouraged to demonstrate how Ephraim’s contribution has bettered our understanding of the discourse under the theme, but also to bring out any gaps therein if necessary.
An editorial note will precede the papers.
3. Time Frame
The following time frame is proposed:
13 September 2019: presentation of this concept note to the DOE and discussion (done)
30 September 2019: identification and assignment of authors and corresponding paper titles
31 December 2019: submission of draft papers for peer review
31 January 2020: finalisation of peer review process
28 February 2020: receipt of revised publishable papers
31 March 2020: publication of the special issue of MAJE
4. Call for Papers
Authors interested to contribute a paper are now invited to do so, indicating the working title of their paper and the theme under which it falls (see Part 2 above) before 30 September 2019.
All Communication: Ronald Mangani (rmangani@cc.ac.mw; rmangani@yahoo.com)
For tributes to Ephraim given by friends and colleagues, click here
The agrarian question in West Africa is dominated by the
integration of peasant agriculture or smallholder farming into agribusiness
markets, which includes contract farming, but also other mechanisms to
encourage uptake of inputs and the incorporation of farmers into corporate
controlled food processing. Although there is a growing presence of medium-scale
farms and acquisition of farmlands by foreign corporations, smallholders
continue to be dominant in domestic and export crop production. This dominance does
not mean agribusiness has a lesser presence in West Africa, but that the commanding
agribusiness interests tend to prefer the integration of smallholders into
markets rather than directly investing in large estate production.
A crop such as cocoa illustrates the scale of agribusiness reach
in West Africa. Up to about 80 percent
of world cocoa production originates from West Africa. Peasant farmers – rather than corporate
interests – largely produce cocoa, but three transnational companies (Cargill, Barré
Callebaut and Archer Daniel Midland) dominate global cocoa processing and
trading, controlling over 70 percent of cocoa processing. These multinationals have a large presence in
West Africa and have established processing facilities, often in export-free
zones.
In the Cote d’Ivoire, the largest producer in the world, these
multinationals have taken over state marketing and processing facilities. In
Ghana these multinationals work closely with the state and NGOs to establish
control over the cocoa production chain, introducing certification schemes,
child labour controls and gradually establishing control over the internal
marketing.
The origins of export crop production in West
Africa and under colonial rule
Export crop production has a long
history in West Africa, dating back to the early nineteenth century palm oil
trade with Europe. During the second half of the nineteenth century groundnuts,
cocoa, rubber and cotton emerged as major exports. These export crops were
largely organised by an African merchant class allied with traditional rulers.
Although colonial rule did not result in the expropriation of land to make way
for a settler colonial agriculture, this did not mean that agriculture was not
exploitative. Various forms of coercion were used to ensure that the peasantry
produced cheap crops for export, including: the creation of a labouring class
through forced labour; retentions and the reinvention of various forms of
servitude within the system of colonial indirect rule, which were justified as
being the cultural privileges of the ruling class; various forms of taxation
for peasant cultivators that ensured their participation in export crop
production; and, the deliberate creation of labour reserves in the hinterlands
by preventing domestic forms of capital accumulation and industry emerging in
these areas.
Under colonial rule there was
minimal expenditure on agricultural modernisation through technological
development. The main emphasis was on the extraction of surplus by merchant
trading companies from peasant producers.
Although peasant producers dominated production, the export trade in
agricultural commodities was characterised by very high concentration with
three companies controlling 70 percent of the import-export trade.
Coercive relations of production, and perceptions of unfair prices
for crops led to many grievances, which fuelled the anti-colonial independence movements.
By the 1940s the edifices of indirect rule crumbled away, leading to a
transition to independence. The lack of modern agricultural services within the
African colonies failed to provide a support structure for dealing with the
challenges of agricultural modernisation. This was exemplified by the crises of
the swollen shoot disease in the Gold Coast cocoa industry in the 1940s and
1950s and the African maize rust epidemic in the 1950s, which decimated maize production. These agrarian calamities highlighted the
needs to create a modern agricultural research infrastructure in West Africa
that could respond to local problems.
Postcolonial agrarian policies
Colonial rule failed to encourage the emergence of an indigenous
capitalist agrarian class. As a consequence, following independence the state
took on the role of investing in agricultural production and creating a
national agrarian class, often incorporating elements of the political
class. The US ideology of agricultural
modernisation justified this development, with its emphasis on promoting ‘progressive
farmers’, who were identified as having large-scale estate agriculture.
There were serious problems in adopting the Green Revolution technologies
promoted by international development, due to the ecological and socio-economic
conditions of West Africa. This was exacerbated by the climatic vagaries of the
Sahelian drought of the 1970s and many of these attempts at agricultural
modernisation were unsuccessful. The economic consequences of
the recession of the 1970s compelled most West African nations to seek relief
from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and adopt structural adjustment
programmes. Before economic
liberalisation there were significant attempts to develop new agricultural
initiatives better attuned to local conditions, such as farming systems
research, which worked within national agricultural systems to adapt technology
to the conditions of smallholder agriculture.
Liberalised market reforms and agribusiness
dominance
Transformations within the US economy in the 1970s-80s had large-scale
implications for agricultural development in Africa. New market liberal policy
initiatives pressurised African states to open their markets to foreign capital
and agribusiness capital and divest state agricultural services. At the
juncture in which state investments in agricultural research began make
progress, such as in national seed production capacities, international
pressures subdued the national agricultural research project.
While transnational agribusiness has acquired more lucrative
agricultural enterprises, such as the Cote d’Ivoire state cocoa services, it
has little interest to invest in in small national agricultural sectors. This
has led to an impasse in many sectors in which pressures to privatise has not
been met by purchasers and investment, resulting in the stagnation of
enterprises, such as in many national seed sector agencies. Rather than
purchase national seed companies, transnational corporations such as Pioneer
Dupont have focused on acquisitions of the largest seed companies in Africa,
including the South African company, Pannar. These companies are then used to
penetrate the larger African market. As a consequence
national agricultural research capacity has tend to stagnate and many of the
promising new approaches of the 1970s have been shelved.
Other strategies involve financing and building networks of
marketing corporations, distributors and NGOs to market inputs of transnational
corporations and organise marketing. These third party agencies may be involved
in organising farmer associations and other organisations to promote the
marketing of packages of inputs and seeds. For instance USAID supports the NGO
ACDI-VOCA to promote Pioneer Dupont seeds in West Africa, and cocoa
transnational processors work with CARE International and other international
NGOS to organise farmer training, Farmers’ Field Schools, and to build up
tracking systems to establish quality and standards controls over production.
Inclusive agricultural markets or agribusiness
dominance?
These corporate systems are gradually replacing national food
governance or influencing national governance to meet the specific needs of
transnational corporations. While these systems of food governance and market
reorganisation are often promoted as pro-poor or inclusive, they impose
specific requirements on farmers, and often marginalise farmers that do not
comply with the technology and market dictates of the corporations. For instance, medium-scale farmers have
recently been idolised as a positive development of market reforms and
professional farming. Medium-scale
farmers often displace smallholders and appropriate their land, but since they
consume higher levels of inputs and technology, they create better marketing
opportunities for agribusiness. This expansion of the commercial agricultural
products of agribusiness is also undermining national agricultural research,
which is increasingly becoming displaced by the market, or in its bid to be ‘competitive’,
incorporated as a partner into the quest of transnational agribusiness for
markets.
Ultimately this focus on agribusiness undermines alternative approaches to research that work outside high-input agriculture. Alternatives that are often driven by environmental, agroecological and smallholder concerns, or which could provide an innovative base for developing genuine adaptations to climate change based on local innovations and solutions.
Presented at public debate on “What is the Character of the Agrarian Question in Contemporary Africa?” Held at PLAAS, University of Western Cape on 14 May 2019.
Written
by: Kojo Amanor
Photo credit: IBM Research: ‘One of the more than 1,200 tractors on the Hello Tractor platform in Nigeria’. For original photo on Flickr, click here.
A new paper based on our work with young people in post-land land reform resettlement areas is out in the journal, Review of African Political Economy. You can read it in full here. It’s part of a great special issue on Zimbabwe edited by Grasian Mkodzongi and Peter Lawrence, which is well worth looking at.
While there has been an explosion of interest in the role of young people in rural development, most recently through a much-publicised (and mostly rather good) IFAD report, policy recommendations tend to focus on the economic opportunity questions, not the complex, practical, lived, emotional realities of young people in challenging environments. Our paper attempted to open these up, especially through learning from young people’s own testimonies.
The paper is based on research carried out in Mvurwi area in Mazowe district, north of Harare and Masvingo district in the southeast of the country. The data are based on a cohort study of 183 young people aged between 20 and 31 in 2016, and so aged between four and 15 at land reform. The study is based on a survey of all indivduals, plus 31 randomly-selected in-depth biographical interviews. These are all children of the settlers whose fortunes we have been following over many years now, as part of our long-term tracking studies on livelihoods after land reform. This allows the study of young people to be set in context, both of land reform challenges and wider generational shifts.
These are two very different areas in terms of livelihood opportunities, but there were similar findings reflecting the challenges of generational transfer in resettlement areas. Many young people were in a period of ‘waithood’ – neither dependent children or independent adults. Precarious, stressful lives were evident among many, and income-earning opportunities were temporary and fragile. Many saw small-scale, intensive irrigated agriculture as the best option, and some were able to address the major challenges of social reproduction, and begin a path of accumulation. This however was dependent on access to land, and some resources to get started.
The findings challenge some of the assumptions presented in standard narratives about young people and agriculture. Those in our sample were not the lazy, indolent, unemployed youth of some characterisations uninterested in the toil of agriculture, nor were they necessarily the entrepreneurial whizz-kids of a new tech-savvy generation who were going to change everything. Instead they were young people struggling, waiting and living emotionally-stressful, tough lives, but trying their best – through education to get more stable jobs outside the area or investing in production at home, often in alliance with their parents, who were able to provide small parcels of land or a leg-up with a new venture.
The context in Zimbabwe is of course peculiar with the sustained collapse of the wider economy, combined with opportunities for land-based income earning provided by the land reform. This means that irrigated agriculture above all other options provides the best option, for both men and women in both the wetter and more dryland sites. This is certainly practising a different type of agriculture to their parents’, and it often involves more use of technologies and entrepreneurial networks, as pumps and pipes are bought and markets for vegetables grown are found, but it allows for young people to commit to rural life and production in ways not seen in other countries, as this case shows:
‘Having realized the disaster ahead in my life [working in South Africa], I decided to go back home to do farming. In 2010 I got married and am now blessed with two children. I am now a full-time farmer doing market gardening alongside my father. I started with 0.1 ha, given by a relative, and I worked together with my father, in 2015 one ha was allocated by the village head, and I have a 5.5 HP pump, and can work independently. I grow cabbages, tomatoes and green mealies all year round and sell in Masvingo. I hire a motor car from one of the local farmers. I also have one hectare dryland plot, given by my father in 2011. I saw the possibilities of farming in South Africa [when employed as a farmworker]. There’s plenty of land, good soils and water here, but when you don’t irrigate, the crops get burned and fail.’
This does not mean that all is rosy. Far from it. Striking in the interviews we undertook across the sites, was the sense of boredom, despair and depression. This is combined with a tangible frustration – personal and political – with the current situation, and the failure of the state (and so the ruling party) to provide for the next generation. The real difficulties and dangers of precarious work – in for example illegal mines or moving across borders as illegal migrants – were evident too. And this took its toll, not only in criminalising young people desperate to make an income, but as several admitted, this also led to drug and alcohol abuse, often in ways that shocked them personally, as the following testimony shows:
‘I was born at Mushagashe in 1989, and did primary school here. In 2004, I slipped out of the country to South Africa as an illegal immigrant. I had no documents. I evaded the police and border control as I went through the notorious Limpopo river. We were five, and fortunately we all survived the jaws of the crocodiles in the river. I stayed in South Africa for six months, and did piece work on the farms. Hunger was a menace as I survived on handouts from fellow Zimbabweans who were employed. I then decided to go back to Zimbabwe and I helped my parents for two years doing all the farming activities. Thereafter I again tried my luck to find a job. I went to Chiadzwa diamond mine in Manicaland and later Shurugwi to do gold panning. I also worked in Nema mine near Bulawayo. This involved processing mine dumps, but there were disputes and the place was closed down. In many ways, life was rosy as I could manage to buy what I wanted. However, I encountered a lot of fighting with fellow gold panners. The police troubled us, always locking us up. I was later engaged in some vices that were against my religion like beer drinking’.
Gender differences in young people’s experiences are striking too. Women may seek to marry earlier, in the hope of gaining opportunities beyond the family of birth, although with access to land in the resettlements there is a rising pattern of men moving to the wife’s home if land is available. Alternatively, if parents have the funds, continuing in education as part of a seemingly endless cycle of exam retakes is common for young women, combined with support for domestic and farming work at home. The hope is for sufficient qualifications even for the most menial of jobs, even though so few are available. Today in the informal economy, labour for both women and men is about work not employment, getting enough through a variety of activities, rather than ever having a stable job.
Part of the frustrating period of ‘waithood’ for men is waiting to establish a home and family. Delays in marriage for men are common, with children being born later. This has an impact on men’s conceptions of masculinity, as several informants relayed in different ways. This shift in the demographic cycle is in part because of the precarity of informal work available off-farm. As the case above shows, this is not a life where bringing up a family is feasible. This is why many men reflected that coming ‘home’ to farm, or develop ‘projects’, was the best option, as the first case showed.
While the land reform has provided opportunities for a generation that got the land, the next generation is struggling. Small opportunities exist, and sub-division of original allocations is ongoing. But the inter-generational challenge of land reform has not been addressed. As argued on this blog many times, redistribution of land is just one step, but in Zimbabwe there has been an abject failure to formulate a wider strategy for agrarian reform that includes support for the longer-term, and for the next generation.
Our research has exposed this challenge, but also pointed to some ways forward rooted in the lived realities of young people. As the paper argues, a focus on young people, land and agriculture is a vital area for policy and development for the future.
Primarily through its investment
promotion agency, Ethiopia has been encouraging business investment
for decades. It uses incentives such as import, export and income tax reduction
or exemption, and provides investors with access to land. In
a recent study, we explored the effectiveness of these incentives on
agribusiness investment and found that – comparable to other
studies – investors in agribusinesses were not motivated by
incentive packages per se but by the desire to capture domestic and export
markets that lead to sustained profit.
Agriculture remains the backbone of Ethiopia’s
economy and society:
it accounts for 35 per cent of Ethiopia’s gross domestic
product (GDP), 95 per cent of agricultural GDP is produced by about 15 million
smallholder famers, and is the source of more than 70 per cent of the country’s
foreign exchange earnings. Successive governments in Ethiopia have emphasised
smallholder agriculture development and provided improved farm inputs and
extension services. In recent years, Ethiopia reduced
the number of people living below the poverty line from 44.2 per
cent in 2000 to 23.5 per cent in 2016 however, despite encompassing 74.3
million hectares of suitable agricultural land, Ethiopia remains food and
nutrition insecure. Agriculture remains predominantly subsistence, dependent on
rain and vulnerable to frequent droughts.
At the heart of incentivising agribusiness
has been an effective exploitation of Ethiopia’s abundant land and labour
resources to attain such objectives as economic growth, production of export
commodities to generate foreign exchange earnings, and ensuring food and
nutrition security. The investment package comprises of making land available
for lease for up to 50 years, often at prices as low as US$6 per hectare; a
range of tax and non-tax incentives including duty free import privileges on
machinery; 9-15 years of tax holidays; a one-stop-shop facility for investors
to obtain a business license and secure access to land; investment guarantees
and repatriation of profits and dividends. Agribusinesses were particularly
encouraged to invest in sparsely populated lowlands in return for further
incentives.
Business responded positively but licensed investments
largely did not materialise: we found that between
2000-2017, 11,210 agricultural investors were licensed, of which at least 700
were foreign investors. However, of the total licensed projects only 20 per
cent (2242) went on to partly or fully start an operation, while some high
profile international investors failed to implement projects. Many
factors hampered investment, including a lack of infrastructure, competing
claims by local communities over the land being transferred for commercial
farms, and a lack of political stability over the past 3-4 years.
Investors who
leased large tracts of land (often more 5000 ha) often benefitted from fiscal
incentives as they had low land lease prices and access to loans from the
Development Bank of Ethiopia. However, relatively small agribusinesses that
often cater for domestic markets did not benefit from the full range of fiscal
incentives, either because they did not import large quantities of capital
goods and/or their produce was not exported. Overall, we found that while
fiscal incentives were beneficial to agribusiness they were not the drivers of
business investment. Instead, agribusinesses were driven by availability of and
access to suitable agricultural land; domestic and export market opportunities;
long-term prospects to grow the business and make a sustained profit; and personal
motivations, training and experience in the sector.
From our findings and conclusions, we strongly recommend a rethink and review of investment incentives. Ineffective incentive instruments should be revised and foregone tax revenues used instead to develop infrastructure that enhances investment and development of the agriculture sector. Similarly, investment promoting agencies, including the Ethiopian Investment Commission, need to focus on relatively smaller (and local) investments emerging from within the smallholder sector. Smallholders capable of growing into agribusiness should be supported by the incentives structure so that they do not miss out on tax free access to relevant technologies, access to land, and opportunities to transition into agribusinesses. Finally, agribusiness promoting agencies need to provide reliable information on size and suitability of land for investment, access to infrastructure, markets, etc.
The full research note, on which this blog is based, can be found here
Written by: Gezahegn Ayele, Seife Ayele and Tebeje Negussie
South Africa’s land panel finally produced its report at the end of July. At 144 pages it’s an impressive document, making all the right noises. South Africa, like Zimbabwe, left the land issue for too long. 25 years after freedom, at least now a serious move is being made in South Africa. But will it make a difference?
The report documents the sorry tale of land reform in South Africa since 1994. The misuse of funds, the corruption, the inappropriate technical designs, the focus on a misplaced ideal of ‘commercial’ farming, and the lack of focus on redistribution, with restitution taking up so much effort. The lack of a capacity of government, and the paltry funds allocated, as well as the reliance on often poorly equipped consultants, are also pointed to. The hopeless state of land administration systems outside freehold private property is also highlighted, as most South Africans still have no formal recognition of their rights. The report makes it very clear that action on land reform is long overdue, and that the failures to date lie substantially at the door of the state and the ANC as the ruling party over this period.
Expropriation and redistribution: new and old debates
Much of the public and media debate has been about the mechanisms of expropriation, and in particular the recommendation that some redistribution should be without compensation. A couple of representatives of white commercial farming on the presidential panel did not sign up and issued an alternative report in protest. AgriSA and the usual suspects made a lot of fuss in the media on the report’s release. But, as many more level-headed commentators have noted, the debate about expropriation without compensation is a diversion. Expropriation was possible under existing rules; the issue was that the state had failed to act. The report recommends only ten circumstances where no compensation should be paid, including where land is not being used or being held for speculation. In other settings, compensation of different levels will be required. This makes complete sense.
Perhaps the most important element in the report in my view is the policy shift towards equity as a goal of land reform. Land reform is cast in its wider sense, as around justice as well as production, recognising the multiple social and economic roles of land in society. This is crucial. Leading from this is a recommendation for shifting the focus of land reform funding towards redistribution, and focusing on three groups: poor, smallholders, commercialising small-scale farmers and medium-scale commercial farmers. Only 10% of funds should be allocated to large-scale, black-owned commercial farming, the rest split between these three priority groups. This is a big, important shift, and could see meaningful land reform with a redistributive focus. Further, the report makes the case for substantial (at least half) allocations to women, and for a focus on urban/peri-urban land, a key issues for South Africa.
Adding to redistribution, restitution and land tenure reform, the report also recommends adding a fourth pillar to the land reform programme: land administration. Given the parlous state of land administration in South Africa, this is an important move, and will give rights to many marginalised people in ‘squatter’ settlements, as workers on farms, or farmers in the homelands. This will also provide an important route to assuring accountability, and insisting that the land reform programme is targeted properly. This will not be an easy undertaking, and must avoid a process of land privatisation, instead emphasising the allocation of rights, including communal rights to land.
There has been much bluster in the South African media and Twittersphere, since the report’s release, but for a good overview of the report’s findings, see this SABC interview from the brilliant Ruth Hall of PLAAS, one of the report authors, as well as some balanced commentaries in the South Africa press (for example here, here and here). International press coverage seems to have been muted, but, recalling its (mostly) appalling coverage of Zimbabwe, the BBC of course couldn’t resist the use of the words ‘land seizures’, even if qualified with ‘limited’!
Zimbabwe lessons?
What are lessons for and from Zimbabwe? Zimbabwe’s experience is not even mentioned in the report (even the bibliography, although it’s good that Mandi Rukuni is acknowledged as attending some meetings). This is rather surprising, given the lessons learned since 2000. Perhaps the fear of the Zimbabwe bogey-man being raised by opponents was the reason.
I think there are important lessons both ways, and regional neighbours really ought to collaborate on important issues like land. The equity focus has certainly been a central tenet of Zimbabwe’s land reform since 1980, but how to balance different interests, with different political clout remains a challenge. The importance of A1 resettlement in Zimbabwe is clear (encompassing the first two groups in the South African priorities) and the real potentials for providing food, employment and income, alongside welfare and support, are evident across the country. South Africans could learn a lot from the Zimbabwe experience for any new programme south of the Limpopo.
A lesson from Zimbabwe is that moving from land reform to wider agrarian reform is crucial – and this means changing the agrarian structure and with this the agrarian economy. This must be the ambition in South Africa, but through a more deliberate, slower process with less disruption. Redistributing land is only step, as the report recognises. However, Zimbabwe has so far failed to provide the post-settlement support that is required. This will be a big issue in South Africa, as, like Zimbabwe, technical capacities are not geared up to supporting this sort of farming.
The importance of medium-scale farms as a complement to the smallholder sector is also recognised in Zimbabwe, but again the tension between A1 and A2 farming has been an issue, and the failure to capitalise on the potential synergies between small and medium-scale farming as part of territorial development remains an issue. Redistribution of land in an area, seeking linkages and complementarities with on and off-farm based activity is vital, and remains a big unmet challenge for Zimbabwe, as I have long argued. Hopefully South Africa will think more strategically and invest for local economic development with land reform at the centre. These sort of practical, wider development questions are largely absent in the report, focused as it is on land, and in particular the legal ramifications of reform.
The highlighting of land administration is however a vitally important move in the South African report. Similar issues arise in Zimbabwe, as I have pointed out before. The dangers of aiming for comprehensive registration rather than a more flexible rights allocation is present too, and Zimbabwe and South Africa share the dilemmas, and long-inherited biases of the freehold tenure model.
So, yes, there are many important lessons for and from Zimbabwe. I hope the biases – even among progressives who should know more – about Zimbabwe that are deeply held in South Africa can be shed, and the region as a whole (including Namibia) can learn together about how to deal with the appalling inheritance of settler colonialism at last.
Beyond policy-speak to political action
What next? How to move beyond a well-argued report to action on the ground at scale? The report is full of legalistic proclamations and policy-speak in true South Africa style. Zimbabwe of course had many of these before 2000: well argued, costed, policy plans for reform. The faith in state action apparently remains in South Africa – perhaps surprising given the track-record. The report assumes implementation will follow forthcoming policy approval.
The report’s authors are not naïve, however. Many have struggled for action on land reform over decades. Everyone knows that political action – from diverse sources within and outside parliament – must follow. The big question will be: will the South African state, with pressure from big capital, international investment, influential ‘tribal’ leaders and political parties not committed to land reform, actually – at last – commits to land reform on the scale and with the support that is needed?
We will have to watch carefully as funds are allocated, and capacity built. It seems President Ramaphosa is committed, but he has also got other problems on his plate. There are plenty of routes to blocking progressive action, and civil society will have to be ready to put pressure to realise the vision of the report.
Written by, Milu Muyanga, Adebayo Aromolaran, Thomas Jayne, Saweda Liverpool-Tasie, Titus Awokuse, Adesoji Adelaja
There is evidence to show that there has been a transition regarding the structure of land ownership in Africa, particularly a rise in the number of commercialised medium-scale farms (MSFs) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The objective of this study was to determine whether the growth of MSFs promotes agricultural commercialisation in SSA, and the brief presents the preliminary results of the first round of data analysis collected through the survey. Emphasis is placed on the characteristics of these emergent MSFs, the nature of the structural changes that produce them, and how they potentially influence the welfare of small-scale farms in Nigeria. The results of the brief are divided into the current topics: Pathways into MSF commercialisation, land access and use, farm production and assets, interaction between MSFs and SSFs, and agricultural commercialisation.
Share
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
