Zimbabwe: Disaster in Agric Production Looms

Source from:  Financial Gazette (Harare) 10 January 2008 01/11/2008

THE government's hopes to make the 2007-8 agricultural season a success could turn out to be the "mother of all disasters" due to excessive rains and late planting by most newly resettled farmers. Incessant rains have resulted in most fields being waterlogged and farming experts this week said most crops could have been salvaged if farmers had planted earlier. The experts said the heavy rains would not have been an issue for commercial farmers because of proper planning methods they use but for the bulk of the new farmers who depended on government for support, a disaster looms. Top dressing fertiliser, which is critical during this time of the farming season, is now reportedly in short supply. Agriculture remains the backbone of the country's economy. In 1998, it accounted for 28 percent of Zimbabwe's gross domestic product, broadly defined as the total value of goods and services produced by a country in a year. Then it employed an estimated 66 percent of the country's workforce. But emotive land reforms have taken the country several decades back. The government in 2000 embarked on agrarian reforms when vast tracts of land belonging to white commercial farmers were forcibly allocated to landless blacks to address historical land imbalances. The exercise saw agricultural production plummet and foreign currency earnings from tobacco, largely, suffering a heavy blow. Critics blame the haphazard land reform programme for compounding the country's economic crisis now in its ninth year although President Robert Mugabe's government blame travel restrictions imposed by Australia, the European Union and the United States for precipitating the economic meltdown. Although the government distributed farming implements to new farmers last year, it failed to provide fertiliser, and yet the heavy rains being experienced have resulted in nutrients in the soil being washed away. "For most commercial farmers' crops would have grown and absorbed all the nutrients but for the new farmers it is not looking good at all. It will be the mother of all disasters," said John Worsley Worswick, chief executive officer of Justice for Agriculture (JAG). JAG represents about 4 300 white commercial farmers dispossessed by the government's fast-track land reform programme. "Unless there is adequate fertiliser to replenish what is being leached, then this season will be a disaster," said Commercial Farmers Union president Trevor Gifford. Renson Gasela, the Movement for Democratic Change spokesman for agriculture, said excessive rains should not be cited as an excuse for what he expects to be a poor harvest. "As only a third of the seed maize has been planted, we need to save that small crop. Top dressing fertilizers must be made available, otherwise this mini crop will be a total write-off," said Gasela. "Once again, the government cannot escape the blame, not for copious rains, but for the perennial failure to have sufficient seed and fertilizers .We cannot blame rain. The weather forecasters had already predicted above normal rains. What preparations were done? Nothing, except promising the farmers seed and fertiliser imports even as late as end of November 2007." Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi predicted a 4 percent growth in agriculture notwithstanding drought conditions experienced during the 2006/07 cropping season. But critics say Mumbengegwi's forecast is wishful thinking, given the state-orchestrated confusion on the farms. JAG's Worswick said a third of the 400 remaining members of his union still on the land were idle as evictions continue. The 400 remaining white farmers in the country are banking on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) tribunal's interim relief order issued against the government, which allows them to remain on their properties. Worswick hoped the SADC order would be extended to protect all the remaining farmers. The interim relief order, granted in Windhoek, Namibia, late last year, protects William Michael Campbell and his family and all his employees from takeover. Government had forecast that two million hectares would be put under maize and would yield three million tonnes. Enditem