Once the bread basket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe has become dependent on
donor food in a few short years. A recent UN report estimates that by early
2009 more than 5 million of Zimbabwe’s estimated 12 million people will
require food assistance, with the winter wheat harvest unlikely to make any
significant difference.
One of the few remaining white farmers in the prime Nyamandlovu farming
area, in Matabeleland North Province, who declined to be identified, told
IRIN: “The crop that I planted was severely damaged after war veterans
ordered my workers off the land as they campaigned for President [Robert]
Mugabe in the June presidential elections, and the little that survived is
still facing many challenges, which include persistent power cuts and
shortages of fertiliser.”
In 2000 Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government launched the fast-track land reform
programme, expropriating, often violently, nearly 4,500 white-owned farms to
be distributed amongst landless blacks. The government failed to provide
agricultural inputs to the new farmers, while in other cases the farms were
handed out to government ministers, party members and army and intelligence
officers, who often left their land fallow.
The white farmer, who planted 60 hectares of wheat and 10 hectares of
barley, said outside events disrupted agricultural planning in the period
leading up to the second round of presidential voting on 27 June.
“Power cuts are becoming frequent and as a result the load-shedding schedule
that the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) had availed is not
being followed … on most days we get electricity during the night and it
is impossible to do any meaningful irrigation at that time,” he said.
“Most of the wheat and maize I planted has died off, and I will realise far
less than what I was supposed to get if electricity was supplied
continuously,” the farmer said.
This is my first winter wheat crop, but most of it has been destroyed
because I have not been able to draw enough water to irrigate the crop, and
the power outages have been frequent of late
“Close to half of the wheat I planted is damaged and the one [field] I am
tending now is of poor quality due to the water shortage, and I have
cancelled any future plans of growing any winter crop,” he said. “If I had
not got any interruptions on the farm I would have put over 100 hectares
under irrigation, but the country’s politics is affecting current
production.”
It is a tale repeated across some of the country’s prime agricultural areas.
The white farmer’s neighbour, a beneficiary of Mugabe’s land redistribution,
who declined to be identified, told IRIN that his attempt to farm winter
wheat has been a disaster.
“This is my first winter wheat crop, but most of it has been destroyed
because I have not been able to draw enough water to irrigate the crop, and
the power outages have been very frequent of late … the harvest I will get
will be far below my expectations,” the new farmer said.
The new farmer planted 40 hectares of wheat, but said he would be lucky to
harvest more than five metric tonnes; in future he would not plant crops
that required irrigation and would rely on seasonal rainfall if he grew any
crops during winter.
“The crop was damaged at an early stage, as we used to have power for about
three days a week, but now electricity supplies are being cut almost daily
and this is disturbing irrigation cycles … most of the wheat is now facing
problems,” he said.
The government estimates that about 8,900 hectares of winter wheat was
planted, or 13 percent of the area required to produce the more than 400,000
metric tonnes the country needs to meet its annual requirement.
Politics is the cause of food shortages
Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo was reported as saying, “The projected
wheat winter crop is not good, but we have learnt a lesson and already we
are now preparing for the summer crop.
“We are making sure that seed companies are getting seed and fertiliser
ready for the season, and already we have imported 30,000 tonnes of seed for
the 2008/09 season. The country needs 50,000 tonnes [of seed] for planting
two million hectares of maize and the rest will be supplied by local
manufacturers,” Gumbo said.
Renson Gasela, former chief executive officer of the state controlled Grain
Marketing Board (GMB), said Zimbabwe would probably produce about a fifth of
its consumption needs.
“Zimbabwe requires 400,000 tonnes of wheat per annum but this year we will
hardly get 80,000 tonnes, and the reasons are several: power shortages, and
a serious shortage of Compound D fertiliser, which was nowhere to be seen in
the country, and as a result many farmers reduced the amount of land they
… [planted],” he said.
“We will get the smallest crop of wheat that has been produced in this
country this year, and the only solution to the current farming crisis is to
have a political settlement that will address the current problems …
anything else is just a stopgap measure,” Gasela said.
The President of the Zimbabwe Indigenous Commercial Farmers Union (ZICFU),
Wilson Nyabonda, said ZESA was to blame for the disastrous crop. “Farmers
will not get any meaningful wheat harvest this year because of electricity
shortages, and most of the wheat died due to moisture stress, so there is
not much to talk about.” – (IRIN)