In an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the recent agriculture workshop Laurie said others were doing contract farming, which is more lucrative.
"I stopped because of the problems facing commercial farmers in Zimbabwe," he said.
"In Zimbabwe there were about 4 5000 white commercial farmers before 2000. This has continued to dwindle to about 600 and then 400 and now about 300 are left practicing their trade.”
A senior CFU official said some farmers were available to train new commercial farmers who had been given large farms by the Mugabe regime under the controversial Land Resettlement Programme undertaken in 2000.
"I think they would be interested in training the new farmers. In fact, they are very keen on being mentors for the country. But maybe we need to train them first – because some of them can farm but they can't train."
He confirmed Laurie’s estimate saying, "We have between 30 and 40 farmers per province right now so 300 would be a correct figure for the whole industry to-date. Some are, however, not farming so you can see how difficult it is to place a finger on the exact numbers.
Former Indigenous Commercial Farmers Union President, Davison Mugabe, said some former commercial white farmers were returning to Zimbabwe.
"They were given farms from collateral guaranteed by the Government of Zambia at good inflation rates," Mugabe said.
"However, things have now changed and some of them are returning to Zimbabwe especially after dollarisation. I do not know the number but I can tell you that indeed some white former commercial farmers are coming back to Zimbabwe from Zambia".
The Zimbabwe Investment Authority, the nation's investment scrutiniser, said it could be true that the commercial farmers were indeed returning to the country.
"Zimbabwe farmers are allowed special deductions over and above the normal deductions," the ZIA said. "Examples include expenditure on fencing, clearing and stamping land, sinking boreholes and wells and on aerial and geophysical surveys."
Post published in: Agriculture