Zimbabwe’s land reform areas twenty years on (6)

Reflections on processes of agrarian change across sites

As the previous blogs in this series have shown, there are quite dramatic differences between resettlement sites in our Masvingo sample, with different patterns of differentiation and so different trajectories of change emerging. This blog focuses on this comparison, and tries to draw out some of the most important differences.

Perhaps the most stark differences are between the A1 (smallholder) and A2 (medium-scale commercial) sites. The former emerged from land invasions more or less exactly 20 years ago, led by war veterans and others, and involving contesting land with then resident white farmers. Informal settlements were established as ‘base camps’ and only during the next year or so did regularised settlements emerge. Indeed, 20 years on some of our sites are still informal, and barely planned. The A2 farms emerged from a more formal procedure of application, although as noted this could be manipulated through political and other connections. These are much larger allocations, certainly for dryland A2 farms, and were expected to emerge as the new basis of commercial agriculture, led by an educated, professional middle-class farming elite.

The envisaged plan, first laid out in 1998 as part of the government’s plan for a new phase of land reform, has not emerged. With a few outlier exceptions amongst A2 farms, the A1 farms are by-and-large much more successful, certainly in terms of per area production, but also in terms of employment generation and the dynamics of accumulation and investment that have emerged. The A1 farms additionally have driven a wider process of local economic development, while A2 farms, like their large-scale commercial farm predecessors, have remained dislocated from local economies, although do provide a source of employment for poorer A1 farmers, and nearby communal area households too.

Within the A1 areas, as the previous blogs have shown, there are quite stark differences. Without doubt it is among the A1 self-contained farms where the greatest success is observed. Partly this is due to the nature of the original settlers, being more connected and with greater levels of assets, but it is partly due to the entrepreneurial focus of the self-contained farmers. As separated off farms, they have to go it alone, invest in farm equipment and infrastructure, building the farm up from scratch. Unlike in a villagised setting they can rely less on neighbours – for example for work parties, and even for the supply of temporary work. They must develop their farm business, and link to markets themselves, investing in infrastructure and transport, as well as accommodating permanent labour on the farm. This is of course not universally the case, and there is significant differentiation amongst self-contained A1 farmers, as the earlier blog has shown. Nevertheless, there are a good proportion of our A1 self-contained sample – admittedly from the higher potential areas of Gutu and Masvingo districts – who are ‘accumulating from below’ and emerging as successful petty commodity producers, even creating the beginnings of a rural bourgeoisie, with connections to town and investments elsewhere.

Such an entrepreneurial, petty commodity producer class exists across our other A1 villagised farmers too – both those also in Masvingo and Gutu districts and those further south in often more informal settings. The conditions for accumulation are however more constrained in the villagised schemes. The average arable area is smaller, and limited by allocations. The communal grazing is more or less ‘full’, although in more land abundant areas in Chiredzi and Mwenezi, livestock can graze in nearby under-used A2 areas. As in the self-contained areas, a focus on intensification through ‘projects’ – irrigation gardens, broiler units and contract farming of high value crops – is a route to accumulation that does not require extensive land areas. It is also important for grown-up children requiring land and needing to establish independent livelihoods. Women too lead diversification in agricultural production across the sites, but perhaps especially in the villagised areas, where they additionally are engaged in a range of off-farm activities.

Diversified income earning as part of a portfolio is essential in all resettlement areas but is particularly significant in the informal, dryland A1 sites. Here crop outputs are highly variable, and diversification into trading, natural resource harvesting, crafts and so on is essential, particularly for poorer households. In these informal sites, there certainly are some who are accumulating, through a combination of extensification of farming and livestock production and diversification into a range of mostly trading activities, but perhaps only a third of households, compared to about a half in other A1 sites. This is largely due to the marginality of the area, and the lack of markets and circulation, although cross-border trade – for example selling goats or dried mopane worms – provides opportunities, given the proximity to both the South African and Mozambican borders.

Over time, in all sites the reliance on off-farm employment has declined amongst household heads, as farmers have retired or simply decided to concentrate on farming. But none of these sites are settings where livelihoods are generated solely by farming, for anyone. Remittances from now older children may be important, alongside a variety of local income earning, and the persistence amongst a significant minority of someone (usually a male household head) earning through a job, very often a civil service post, such a teacher, solider or policeman.

External support, including through social welfare grants and pensions, is important for some across our sites, and in the drought year of 2019, welfare payments were especially significant among poorer households in our drier sites in the south of the province. In terms of access to other support, including extension services or command agriculture loans, this is quite sporadic. The sites closer to urban areas, notably the villagised sites in Masvingo district had the greatest access to extension services, while those with more political connections, notably the self-contained sites, had more access to command agriculture, although the coverage was uneven and quite limited, since the programme was focused much more in the higher potential areas of the country.

Proximity to markets is of course a major differentiating factor, and those sites near Masvingo have seen the greatest expansion of agriculture-related businesses. This relates in turn to infrastructure and transport availability, which is again uneven across sites. Despite the ability to produce, the remoteness of some self-contained sites is a constraint, whereas the formerly informal site, Uswaushava, that is along a main road definitely profits from connectivity. The cotton boom in the 2000s in that site was linked to this, with many contracting companies competing for business, and today the market gardening of melons is huge quantities is facilitated by easy transport connections. Comparing sites, it is the level of economic embeddedness, including opportunities to invest in local townships and small businesses in the rural areas, that allows an area to grow, agriculture to thrive and some to accumulate. Different places have different opportunities – in the south, it is connections across borders, elsewhere it is to major urban centres, in other places it is simply links to the immediate local economy, where demand is created due to successful agriculture.

The A2 farms do not profit from such a dynamic of local economic development. They rely instead on selling crops or livestock along more conventional value chains, which are more distant and reliant on wider infrastructure. As discussed in the blog on A2 sites, those relying on independent production in dryland areas are severely hampered due to the lack of flexible finance, and the costs of both production and marketing are high. Some manage to make a go of it, including connecting between the farm business and others in town, but for many, A2 farming has not been profitable, and quite a number of farms are operated more as small-scale operations, yet on large areas. These problems, created by the long-running lack of a system of agricultural finance, is offset when a contracting arrangement can be brokered but these are limited in Masvingo (as tobacco is not a crop grown and cotton has for a long period not been profitable). It is only the sugar farmers, with existing infrastructure and a contract/outgrowing arrangement with the estate central to their operations, that can get over the constraints faced by other medium-scale commercial farmers.

The A2 farms remain quite isolated from the rest of the rural economy. There are exchanges of labour and equipment hire, but little else. They also remain outside local patterns of governance that have impinged on all the A1 areas. In all our A1 sites across the province, on-going chieftaincy disputes have been disruptive. These arose when the new areas were occupied and competing parties claimed the land as theirs. This has not been helped by on-going local wrangles between multiple authorities. This is especially the case in the villagised areas, where Seven Member Committees may combine with local councillors, traditional leaders (headmen) identified by competing chiefs and ruling party ‘cells’. This has often caused confusion and dispute, and has undermined development efforts.

Overall, then, across our sites we see a highly varied pattern. Across the A1 sites, we see a significant dynamic of ‘accumulation from below’ – of successful crop (and to some extent livestock) farming that results in surpluses and so reinvestment in the farm. The scale of such accumulation depends on the year and site, and is linked to market access, infrastructure development and agroecological conditions. In all cases, farm-based incomes are complemented with off-farm income, and employment by household heads as well as adult children is crucial for household economies. The most successful accumulators are found in the self-contained farms, but they are also found across the villagised A1 areas. While this group is consolidating and growing, it still remains at most only a half of all households. Others aspire to this, but are currently failing due to lack of assets or labour, while others are struggling and must adopt much more diverse livelihoods, including selling wage-labour.

This pattern of social differentiation and resultant class formation within the A1 areas and between A1 and A2 areas is an important feature of the new agrarian landscape, both economically and politically. This has important implications for the future, as will be discussed in the next and final blog in this series.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland. Led by Felix Murimbarimba, the Masvingo team is: Moses Mutoko, Thandiwe Shoko, Tanaka Murimbarimba, Liberty Tavagwisa, Tongai Murimbarimba, Vimbai Museva, Jacob Mahenehene, Tafadzwa Mavedzenge (data entry) and Shingirai, the driver. Thanks to the research team, ministry of agriculture officials and the many farmers who have supported the work over the years.

Zimbabwe’s land reform areas twenty years on (3)

What happened in the villagised A1 schemes?

This blog focuses on Masvingo’s villagised land reform areas (where people have an individual arable plot, live in villages and share communal grazing). Our sites (N=99) are nearby the self-contained schemes in Gutu and Masvingo districts discussed in the last blog in this series, and they share many similarities, with a focus on maize production, combined with horticulture. There are fewer who are accumulating significantly, but there are still many who are doing well.

Households in these sites are slightly younger, with the average age of the household head being 43, and there are fewer women who are the main household head (19%), although 41% of households have a de facto female head due to absent husbands. Today, 47% of household heads have off-farm jobs (some quite informal and part-time), such as trading or being builder), down from 67% earlier. 59% of household heads went to school beyond Form II, while 26% have Master Farmer certificates. Many households (58%) have children in the age range 21-30, and 35% of households have adult children who are out of the country earning money, while 27% have children who have established farms, including through a number of subdivisions (only 2% of households had family members who had gone to other resettlements). While overall, these areas have been successful, there were around 10% of the original sample who had left, mostly returning to communal areas, and the farm had been abandoned, or taken over by another settler.

Average maize production across the 99 households in our survey ranged between 1381 kg and 986 kg in the years between 2017 and 2019, with between 26% and 41% producing more than a tonne. Around 85% regularly applied inorganic fertiliser, and nearly everyone used manure. Maize was combined with some other crops, including groundnuts, some millet, and a few starting up cotton production again after a hiatus due to poor prices. However, as in the nearby self-contained areas, the main income-earning in addition to maize was horticulture, with a third of households earning income from selling vegetables. The average figures hide the variations, however, and there is a significant minority (around a quarter) who are struggling to make ends meet.

Some households, through strategic investments, particularly in water management are increasing production significantly. Mr and Mrs MN for example had expanded their home garden plot and had invested in two 5000 litre tanks, and fenced their plot, surrounding their garden and new houses. It looked like a self-contained plot in a village, and intensive horticulture production was being pursued. This combined with maize production in the field around a kilometre away. For some years they had been combining life in nearby Masvingo town with farming in Wondedzo Wares, but had recently decided to commit full-time to farming. Mrs MN explained:

When we first got this plot, we were still living in Masvingo. I had a dress-making business and my husband was in the private transport business, having given up his job as a butcher at TM supermarket in 2008 when the economy was in dire straits. I used to travel as far as Durban selling wedding clothes, bedspreads and cushion covers that I had made. We came once a week, and we had someone here looking after the plot and the cattle, which had grown to a herd of six last year. The guy who we had employed left for South Africa last year, and we decided to move here. We had been investing in the place for some years: boreholes, pumps, fencing and so on. The irrigation system has been in place since 2013-14, but not really working. Now we are going into full production, and I can continue to do wedding dress hire from here, and my husband has his car and can do local transport. We have also got a poultry project, which is building up. We will grow maize, but rainfed production is very risky these days because of the climate, so we are concentrating on irrigation in our home field.

On average households in the villagised A1 areas in Gutu and Masvingo districts owned six head of cattle, and 31% had sold one in the past year, and 23% had sold milk. Informants commented that there was a limit to how many animals could be held because of lack of grazing and most held under ten. Most households balanced cattle sales (for investment, school fees or emergency costs, such as medical fees) with building the herd, and 34% had purchased cattle in the last five years. This meant that 69% used their own cattle for ploughing. However 23% had no cattle at all, and were struggling on all fronts.

On average, because of this more stark differentiation compared to the self-contained areas, the level of farm employment was lower, with 16% employing men permanently and 3% women, and there was more of a focus on temporary employment, with around a third of households regularly employing both men and women for particular tasks. Given that a sizeable group did not have sufficient draft power and did not employ labour, the practice of collective work parties was more evident in these areas, with around 40% of households holding them.

Farm production is combined with a range of off-farm sources, including remittances (48% of households), trading (20%), piece work on others’ farms (27%), welfare payments (35% – for the old, sick, disabled or orphans) and pensions (19%). Quite a few were also making use of natural resources for selling products or making crafts. This was a rather different mix of activities to that seen in the self-contained areas. With a group of perhaps a quarter of households with limited assets and low production, they had to make ends meet across a range of low-skilled and poorly-remunerated activities, including selling labour locally (mostly to other richer A1 farmers). Remittances, pensions and welfare payments featured strongly as complements to agriculture.

As Mrs V explained from Lonely farm, fortunes can change quite dramatically:

We came here originally in 2000 with four cattle. By 2017, we had over 30, but then a terrible disease struck our animals and we lost many. We only have 17 now. Now we don’t have the surplus of milk and meat we had before. That year too, my husband passed away, and we are not doing so well, even though my sons help. We now produce only about a tonne of maize, but before we used to produce four or five tonnes each year, and sell to the Grain Marketing Board. We have access to a vlei (wetland) and it produces good crops, including vegetables, and we have a pump and sell the produce. There’s a huge market when the AFM (Apostolic Faith Mission) gathers. If you are well organised, you can make a killing! In those days we bought scotch carts, ploughs and built our homes. We employ labour from the nearby communal areas, and pay them in cash or kind. Even though we were old, we were doing well! Kids went to boarding school, then colleges and universities. Our quality of life had improved massively.

Even if not on the scale of those in the self-contained resettlements, around half of the sample were regularly producing surpluses and investing, ‘accumulating from below’. Many were selling food to nearby communal areas, or exchanging for labour. In the past five years, 36% of households had bought ploughs, 26% had dug boreholes (especially for vegetable gardens), 17% had bought cars and 50% had invested in solar panels. In other words, a highly differentiated population is observed – some doing well, others less so. For the next generation, subdivision of land is important, as is education in order to find jobs, often abroad.

Several informants commented on how things are developing within the area:

We don’t have to go to Chatsworth now. There are shops here, and a grinding mill. There’s a clinic at Bath farm, and since we are near the communal area, there are other shops and there’s a mini-township there that’s sprung up to service the resettlement area. Things are coming up because of land reform.

People are building beautiful houses here. Even better than town. People have electricity from solar, and some have even connected to ZESA; all paid for by irrigation and selling vegetables. When we came here we had to buy drinking water, but now nearly everyone has a borehole. In our local township there were originally no shops, but now there are nine grocery stores, two bottle stores/bars, two butcheries, two welding shops and two grinding mills.

However, several also commented on declines in environmental conditions. The large vlei at Lonely is drier than it once was, and everyone complained of poor and variable rainfall. Soils are not as good as they once were, and investing in improvements – digging infiltration pits, establishing boreholes and careful ploughing to conserve soil – are all important.

By comparison with the more remote self-contained areas where access is difficult, the state is more present in the A1 villagised areas. There is now a clinic, a school and there is a visible presence of extension workers, vets and others. “Yes, the government has helped us”, one informant explained. What they were wanting though is greater clarity from the government on who is in charge. One informant exclaimed:

We are confused, everything is not functioning. The chiefs are fighting over the land, and the MP is not helping. Some people support Chikwanda, others support Musara. Plots are allocated by different chiefs, and we have competing authorities. We marched to Masvingo a few years ago, and demanded that the district administrator sort things out. This was disturbing development, as conflicts occur. Conflicts are a problem: we have to go to meetings nearly every day!

Overall though over 20 years, conditions have improved, and life is easier than it was when the land was invaded, with facilities and connections improved. With the villagised set-up on the surface these areas look more like the communal areas – but with larger land areas, production is higher and the possibilities for accumulation and investment are there. Unlike in the communal areas where good houses are the result of jobs and remittances, in the resettlements, investments come from farming, making agricultural marketing crucial. When asked about the next 20 years, most people said that if it rains, things will be fine, but if not then irrigation, zero grazing and fodder feeding of animals will be essential. This they said will make it easier to share small areas of land with the next generation, which is a continual concern a generation on from land reform.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland. Led by Felix Murimbarimba, the Masvingo team is: Moses Mutoko, Thandiwe Shoko, Tanaka Murimbarimba, Liberty Tavagwisa, Tongai Murimbarimba, Vimbai Museva, Jacob Mahenehene, Tafadzwa Mavedzenge (data entry) and Shingirai, the driver. Thanks to the research team, ministry of agriculture officials and the many farmers who have supported the work over the years.