Real revival will only come with restored domestic stability and external relations, impossible until some degree of democracy is restored. An official crop and livestock assessment report released in February 2010 shows that the area under maize increased to 1,723,990ha, 14% more than in 2008-9, while the cotton area dropped 17%, to 261,191ha from 316,656ha. The decline in the cotton area planted, according to the report, resulted from lack of comprehensive input support following the scaling down of input-support programmes by cotton companies.
Still, these three crops showed quite dramatically increased yields per hectare. The market for small grains and burley tobacco is largely informal, except for sorghum bought by beer brewers. It is hard to believe soya bean production has stopped, but figures are scarce. Paprika and coffee may disappear from our national range of crops. It might be better to concentrate on domestic food production than on flowers for export. To do this, we would need to ensure that we were at least producing enough seed.
There is some growth, but we must wait and watch carefully to see what shape it takes. An important element in the stability that working farmers look for, and that means now small farmers, especially the ‘new farmers’ who see themselves threatened by new invaders, is security of land tenure. This will be a thorny question for the transitional government to tackle, because many people still carry a lot of historical baggage and because the way forward is not clear. One formula guaranteed to produce more landlessness would be to give farmers commercially transferable title deeds. Many examples from other countries show that, with most farmers, big and small, living in chronic debt, using transferable title deeds as security for loans is the quickest way for small farmers to lose the title to their land. There must be ways of solving this problem, since the livelihoods of many poor farmers and our ability, as a nation, to feed ourselves are at stake.