Livelihoods analysis and agrarian political economy: a new podcast

At the end of last year, I had a great week at PLAAS (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies) at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town discussing with a great cohort of post-grad students working on agrarian change issues in the region. The question of how ‘livelihoods approaches’ – including the ‘sustainable livelihoods framework’ – fitted into such studies and whether it could be integrated with an agrarian political economy perspective came up again and again.

Emerging from these discussions, I recorded a podcast with Ruth Hall and Boa Monjane, now out in the Agrarian Politics series. You can listen to it via the link below. This blog offers some context.

The continuing relevance of livelihoods approaches

From classic studies of seasonality, livelihood change and vulnerability in the 1980s and 90s, to the presentation of more synthetic frameworks, first in Robert Chambers’ and Gordon Conway’s classic IDS discussion paper of 1991, which was followed by my 1998 paper (now 25 years old!) that proposed a Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, based on work on-going at the time with colleagues in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Mali, and led by Jeremy Swift.

These perspectives contributed to a major change in aid programming and funding approaches, and many agencies adopted various forms of a ‘sustainable livelihoods approach’. There followed multiple responses: huge numbers of studies, consultancies, trainings and communications efforts, as the interest in livelihoods approaches took hold.

But what has happened since? ‘Livelihoods’ is no longer the buzzword. The fickle faddism of development has been taken over by others since. Even at IDS, where much of the thinking that led to the approach originated, ‘sustainable livelihoods’ barely appears in the curriculum. Most of our students have never even heard of the approach and not read the papers and books associated with it. This may not matter as the same ideas are being invented in new guises, but sometimes genealogies of ideas are important and we can all learn from past debates.

In my view, the underlying arguments of livelihoods analyses still have relevance, perhaps more so as the interconnections between different ways of making a living are increasingly important, as I discussed in a 2009 paper and reinforced in an excellent new edited collection Livelihoods in the Global South.

The message of the ‘small book’ – Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development (now available open access in English, and also translated into multiple languages, see below) – is clear: livelihoods approaches are an essential lens on questions of rural development, poverty and wellbeing, but these need to be situated in a better understanding of the political economy of agrarian change.

Power and political economy: extending the livelihoods approach

Some of the very legitimate critiques of the early versions of the sustainable livelihoods framework – and particularly the versions that were adapted for use by development agencies – focused on the lack of attention to politics, power and political economy. Some argued that the approach was too deterministic and too technocratic and contestation, dispute and patterns of winners and losers were not made clear. Politics of course appeared in discussions of the ‘institutions and organisations’ acting as mediating between resources and activities, and so affecting outcomes; but in many of the more operational applications, this element became side-lined in favour of a rather mechanistic institutional or policy design focus, rather than attention to the contestations around access and control, as originally intended.

The ‘small book’ therefore aimed to link the original framework with a wider concern with agrarian political economy, making politics, power and control central. The result was an extended framework diagram, articulating key questions in agrarian political economy. Following Henry Bernstein (and his superb book in the same ‘small books for big ideas’ series – Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change), four core questions are asked:

• Who owns what (or who has access to what)? This relates to questions of property and ownership of livelihood assets and resources.
• Who does what? This relates to the social divisions of labour, the distinctions between those employing and employed, as well as to divisions based on gender and age.
• Who gets what? This relates to questions of income and assets, and patterns of accumulation over time, and so to processes of social and economic differentiation.
• What do they do with it? This relates to the array of livelihood strategies and their consequences as reflected in patterns of consumption, social reproduction, savings and investment.

In addition to these four, we can add two more, both focused on the social and ecological challenges that characterise contemporary societies:

• How do social classes and groups in society and within the State interact with each other? This focuses on the social relations, institutions and forms of domination in society and between citizens and the State as they affect livelihoods.
• How are changes in politics shaped by dynamic ecologies and vice versa? This relates to questions of political ecology, and to how environmental dynamics influence livelihoods. These in turn are shaped by livelihood activities through patterns of resource access and entitlement.

Taken together, these six questions – all central to critical agrarian and environmental studies – provide an excellent starting point for any analysis when seeking to link rural livelihoods with the political economy of agrarian change in any setting. The ‘extended livelihoods framework’ offers a way into such an analysis.

Long-term, historical patterns of structurally-defined relations of power between social groups are central, as are processes of economic and political control by the state and other powerful actors, together with differential patterns of production, accumulation, investment and reproduction across society. Such an analysis allows analysis to move beyond mere empirical description of multiple cases to explanations rooted in understandings of wider structural relations, patterns and processes.

A differentiated and longitudinal approach

Taking a differentiated view of rural livelihoods in any context, we see that rural dwellers may be farmers, workers, traders, brokers, transporters, carers and others, with links spread across the urban–rural divide. Classes are not unitary, naturalised or static. Given this diversity of hybrid livelihood strategies and class identities, accumulation—and, therefore, social differentiation and class formation—takes place through a complex, relational dynamic over time.

Indeed, only with a longitudinal perspective, rooted in an understanding of the political economy of agrarian change, can longer-term trajectories of livelihoods be discerned. Rural livelihoods are not isolated and independent, amenable to narrow development interventions, but tied to what is happening elsewhere, both locally and more broadly.

As we discuss in the podcast, a wider political economy perspective is therefore essential for any effective livelihoods analysis, and indeed for any development intervention. And it’s for this reason that I think livelihoods analysis – allied and integrated with other perspectives – remains important today.

You can read the short book in different languages, which are available via the following links (a Chinese version is coming soon…):

English: https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/2123/sustainable-livelihoods-and-rural-development (including OPEN ACCESS)

Spanish: https://icariaeditorial.com/perspectivas-agroecologicas/4549-medios-de-vida-sostenible-y-desarrollo-rural.html

Italian: http://www.rosenbergesellier.it/ita/scheda-libro?aaref=1495

Portuguese: http://livraria.ufrgs.br/produto/15300/meios-de-vida-sustentaveis-e-desenvolvimento-rural

Japanese: https://akashi.co.jp/smp/book/b420384.html

Indonesian: https://insistpress.com/katalog/penghidupan-berkelanjutan-pembangunan-pedesaan/

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Why title deeds aren’t the solution to land tenure problems

Filckr/Icrisat

An excellent new book is out in South Africa, focusing on titling and tenure. A big issue for policy in Zimbabwe. It’s called Untitled. Securing land tenure in urban and rural South Africa, published by UKZN Press and edited by Donna Hornby, Rosalie Kingwill, Lauren Royston and Ben Cousins. It’s well worth a read. While based on South Africa, where the obsession with freehold title is an article of faith, it has many resonances for Zimbabwe, and beyond. 

As I have argued many times before on this blog, a focus on titling is often not the best route to ensuring security of tenure. The obsession with freehold title is repeated endlessly. As Zimbabwe contemplates new policy directions temptations to get involved in mass titling programmes must be resisted. This book is therefore essential reading. It argues for ‘legal recognition of rights within what they call ‘social tenures’. In this article reposted from The Conversation, Ben Cousins, from PLAAS at the University of the Western Cape, explains: 

The conventional view is that insecurity of land tenure results from the lack of a registered title deed which records the property rights of occupants of land or housing. Across Africa, many governments and international development agencies are promoting large-scale land titling as the solution.

In the South African context, some commentators suggest that a key legacy of the apartheid past is the continued tenure insecurity of the third of the population who live in “communal areas”, under unelected chiefs or of traditional councils. The remedy, they suggest, is simple: extend the system of title deeds to all South Africans.

We have just published a book which disputes this view. Untitled. Securing land tenure in urban and rural South Africa contains case studies of a wide range of land tenure systems found in different parts of the country. These include informal settlements, inner city buildings in Johannesburg, “deep rural” communal systems, land reform projects, and examples of systems of freehold rights held by black South Africans since the 19th century.

With the exception of systems of freehold rights, most people who occupy land or dwellings in these areas are “untitled”, and occupy land or dwellings under a very different kind of property regime. We term these social or off-register tenures.

But we argue that, fundamentally, South Africans need to question the assumption that the sole solution to the problem of tenure insecurity is a system of title deeds. Alternative approaches are needed, which we set out to explore.

Social tenures

The book offers an analysis of social tenures, which are regulated by a different logic and set of norms than those underpinning private property. Such tenures are diverse but share some key features. As is the case across the developing world, including Africa, land tenure is directly embedded in social identities and relations.

Rights are often shared and overlapping in character and generally derive from accepted membership of a community or kinship group. Processes of land allocation and dispute resolution are overseen by local institutional structures.

In these contexts, decisions are often informed by norms and values that stress the importance of reciprocal social relationships rather than buying power as the basis for land allocation. They involve flexible processes of asserting, negotiating and defending land rights, rather than the enforcement of legally defined rules.

It’s estimated that in 2011 some 1.5 million people lived in low-cost dwellings provided to the poor by government’s, so-called “Reconstruction and Development Programme” (RDP) houses, with inaccurate or outdated titles, in most cases due to transfers outside of the formal system.

Another 5 million lived in RDP houses where no titles had yet been issued due to systemic inefficiencies. Along with 1.9 million people in backyard shacks, 2 million on commercial farms, and 17 million in communal areas, this means that in that year around 30 million people, nearly 60% of all South Africans, lived on land or in dwellings held outside of the land titling system.

RDP housing. Flickr

The edifice of title deeds

The book contrasts social tenures with the conventional system of title deeds, which constitutes a key element of an imposing “edifice”. The current system of rates, services and processes of development assumes that land tenure equals a surveyed plot with a singular registered owner, which may be persons or corporate bodies.

The system is serviced by a Deeds Registry, private sector surveyors and conveyancers, as well as municipal officials, all governed by a range of laws and regulations in a complex and interlocking manner.

One key problem facing those in social tenures is the discrimination they suffer at the hands of the state and the private sector. Despite some protection under laws such as the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act of 1996, people living in social tenures are severely disadvantaged. They may have to go to court to have their rights legally enforced, but most cannot afford to do so.

Development and land use planning, public investment and service delivery are constrained under these systems of tenure. Elite capture or abuse by unaccountable leaders can also take place, as in communal areas where minerals are found and chiefs and councils enter into business deals with mining companies that benefit only a few.

Titling enthusiasts argue that another problem with social tenures is the fact that banks do not accept untitled land or dwellings as security for bank loans. This constrains the poor from borrowing capital to invest in businesses of their own. But research indicates that few of the poor are willing to risk their homes in this way, since small enterprises often fail.

Tenure reform policy options

How then to proceed with pro-poor tenure reform? Our research indicates that it is not realistic to extend land titling to all; the system may be at breaking point, and is inadequate even for the emerging middle class.

Another option is to adapt elements of the edifice to provide a degree of official and legal recognition of rights within social tenures. Lawyers and planners working with communities and officials have developed a range of innovative practices, concepts and instruments aimed at securing such rights in an incremental manner. This includes special land use zones, recognising occupation rights in informal settlements, and recording rights using locally accepted forms of evidence.

A third option is a more radical overhaul of land tenure, leading to systematic recognition of and large scale support for social tenures. This would involve stronger laws protecting rights holders, an adjudication system that allows new forms of evidence to be considered in determining who holds rights, and new institutions for negotiating, recording and registering rights under social tenures. The system could include the office of a Land Rights Protector.

We believe that these alternatives all pose their own challenges. But we also believe that pursuing alternatives to a system of title deeds is not an impossible task.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Commercial agriculture in Africa: winners and losers

The findings of the Land and Agricultural Commercialisation in Africa project, funded by DFID and ESRC, have just been published in the Journal of Peasant Studies in a series of four papers – an introduction (open access) and country cases from Ghana, Kenya and Zambia.

In this work we asked what difference did the ‘model’ of commercial farming make, contrasting large-scale plantations/estates, medium-scale farms in commercial farming areas and contract farming arrangements linked to core estates (see background paper here). This is a theme being picked up by a new initiative – the Agricultural Policy Research in Africa project of the Future Agricultures Consortium – which includes new work in Zimbabwe, starting this year.

A blog on The Conversation – The pros and cons of commercial farming models in Africa (Ruth Hall, University of the Western Cape; Dzodzi Tsikata, University of Ghana, and Ian Scoones, University of Sussex) – discusses the findings. In the debate about what approaches to revitalising commercial agriculture, at what scale (including medium-scale farms), with what relationships between smallholders and large-scale agribusiness, this research from across Africa is highly relevant to ongoing debates in Zimbabwe.
The pros and cons of commercial farming models in Africa

Workers harvesting from a commercial farm in Ethiopia.
Reuters/Barry Malone

Ruth Hall, University of the Western Cape; Dzodzi Tsikata, University of Ghana, and Ian Scoones, University of Sussex

Colonialism brought large-scale farming to Africa, promising modernisation and jobs – but often dispossessing people and exploiting workers. Now, after several decades of independence, and with investor interest growing, African governments are once again promoting large plantations and estates. But the new corporate interest in African agriculture has been criticised as a “land grab”.

Small-scale farmers, on family land, are still the mainstay of African farming, producing 90% of its food. Their future is increasingly uncertain as the large-scale colonial model returns.

To make way for big farms, local people have lost their land. Promises of jobs and other benefits have been slow to materialise, if at all.

The search is on for alternatives to big plantations and estates that can bring in private investment without dispossessing local people – and preferably also support people’s livelihoods by creating jobs and strengthening local economies.

Two possible models stand out.

Contract farming is often touted as an “inclusive business model” that links smallholders into commercial value chains. In these arrangements, smallholder farmers produce cash crops on their own land, as ‘outgrowers’, on contract to agroprocessing companies.

Then there is growth in a new class of “middle farmers”. These are often educated business people and civil servants who are investing money earned elsewhere into medium-scale commercial farms which they own and operate themselves.

So what are the real choices and trade-offs between large plantations or estates; contract farming by outgrowers; or individual medium-scale commercial farmers?

These different models formed the focus of our three-year study in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. Evidence suggests that each model has different strengths. For policy makers, deciding which kind of farming to promote depends on what they want to achieve.

Plantations are ‘enclaves’

Our cases confirm the characterisation of large plantations as being “enclaves” with few linkages into local economies. They buy farming inputs from far afield, usually from overseas, and in turn send their produce into global markets, bypassing local intermediaries.

Plantations are large, self-contained agribusinesses that rely on hired labour and are vertically-integrated into processing chains (often with on-farm processing). They’re usually associated with one major crop. In Africa, these started with colonial concessions, especially in major cash crops such as coffee, tea, rubber, cotton and sugarcane. Some of these later became state farms after independence while others were dismantled and land returned to local farmers.

Many plantations do create jobs, especially if they have on-site processing. Plantations may also support local farmers if they process crops that local smallholders are already growing. For example, we found an oil palm plantation in Ghana that buys from local smallholders, giving them access to processing facilities and international value chains they would otherwise not reach.

But, typically, plantations have limited connections into the local economy beyond the wages they pay. Where production is mechanised, they create few jobs, as we found in Zambia: the Zambeef grain estate employs few people, and most of these are migrants whose wages don’t go into the local economy. And the jobs that are created are invariably of poor quality.

The main story is that plantations take up land and yet often don’t give back to the local economy. In the cases we researched, all the plantations led to local people losing their land. For instance, the establishment and later expansion of the 10,000-hectare Zambeef estate led to forced removals of people from their cropping fields and grazing lands.

There are some benefits from plantations and estates. But, given more than a century of bad experience, it may be time to concede they seldom – if ever – live up to their promises.

Contract farming brings benefits for some

Contract farming has a long history in Africa, dating back to colonial times. As with plantations, these arrangements were largely for the major cash crops, including cocoa, cotton, tobacco and sugarcane.

Contract farmers are smallholders who enter into contracts with companies that buy and process their crops. Sometimes members of outgrowers’ households might also get jobs on larger “nucleus” estates run by the companies. Whether or not they benefit, or get mired in debt and dependence, depends entirely on the terms of these contracts. Our study looked at contract farming in Ghana’s tropical fruit export sector, in French bean production in Kenya and in sugarcane farming in Zambia.

Contract farming has been hailed by some as the “win-win” solution, enabling commercial investment for global markets without dispossessing local farmers. Farmers farm on their own land, using their own family labour, while also accessing commercial value chains – rather than being displaced by large farms. But we found that this is not necessarily the case. Crucially, there are different kinds of arrangements that determine who benefits.

In Kenya, contract farmers are poorer than most farmers around them. For them, farming on contract provides a crucial livelihood, especially for poor women, who cultivate French beans for the European market and combine this with seasonal jobs on big farms.

In one Zambian block scheme all outgrowers gave up their land to Illovo, a South African company that grows sugarcane. The company pays them dividends. Here, the landowners, typically the old patriarchs, benefit from cash incomes. Young people lose out: they neither inherit the land nor control the cash incomes.

Contract farming clearly provides one effective avenue for smallholders to commercialise. It means, though, that smallholders take on both the risks and the benefits of connecting to commercial value chains.

Medium-scale farming: a promising option

Between the large plantations and the small contract farmers is another model: medium-scale commercial farms owned by individuals or small companies. We studied areas where medium-scale farms were dominating: mango farmers in Ghana, coffee farmers in Kenya and grains farmers in Zambia. While this kind of medium-scale farming also has colonial origins, the past two decades have seen massive growth in new “middle farmers”. Many of them are male, wealthy, middle-aged or retired, often from professional positions.

The medium -scale commercial farming model has a lot to offer. We found that they create more jobs and stimulate rural economies more than either big plantations or smallholder contract farmers. Yet cumulatively, such farms may threaten to dispossess smallholders, just as the big colonial and more recent plantations and estates have done.

The push behind the explosion of the “middle farmers” in the countries we studied has been investment by the educated and (relatively) wealthy. In Ghana in particular, we found, their expansion has displaced smallholders. Cumulatively, even modest-sized farms have led to substantial dispossession and reduced access to land.

Their informal employment patterns mean poor working conditions and few permanent jobs. But, unlike the plantations, these farms are well connected with the local economy. Building on social networks, these “middle farmers” often buy inputs and services from local businesses. At least some of their produce is sold into local markets.

Winners and losers

While policy choices are of course political, they can and should be informed by research about the implications of these different pathways of agricultural commercialisation. What is clear from our research is that different kinds of commercial farming will have different effects on the economy. It’s not just about efficiency. Ultimately, it’s about who wins and who loses.

Ruth Hall, Associate Professor, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape; Dzodzi Tsikata, Associate Professor, University of Ghana, and Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

 

Zimbabwe exports agricultural skills and entrepreneurship to South Africa

Recent reports have celebrated five Zimbabweans who have taken over 15 ha of land, part of a farm in Malmesbury near Cape Town in South Africa. The N7 farmers as they call themselves were allowed to use the land – initially 3 ha now expanding – by the farmer. This was initially for free so they could get established, although now they pay a rent of $80 per hectare. The land was not being used intensively – apparently it had a fodder crop, lupins, planted over winter – and the farmer was happy for others to have a go.

Much to the surprise of many South Africans, and now praised by former President Thabo Mbeki, the Zimbabweans were able to transform the land into a vibrant horticultural enterprise, growing spinach, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, tomatoes and maize. The irrigation equipment on the land was put to work, and they applied manure to the land to improve the quality of the soil. The vegetables are sold at Cape Town’s Epping market.

For many in the media, it was the background of the Zimbabweans that was surprising too. They are all in full time jobs, and are highly qualified. One has a PhD apparently in agriculture, others have degrees in physics, science, engineering and languages. They now have 6 employees, one a Zimbabwean, while others are South African and a Malawian farm manager.

While there have been disputes about the details of the ‘good news’ story, and clearly a bit of a backlash from the South African farming community, the basic take-homes were clear. Zimbabweans – including highly qualified people – can farm, while South Africans had not taken the initiative to use this, or other similar, parcels of land in the same way.

This was rubbed in with Mbeki’s commentary. He linked this to land reform, complaining about the South African land reform and restitution programmes where South Africans preferred to take money rather than invest in actively farming the land. By contrast, he suggested, Zimbabweans were committed to the land and could make good use of it, as he hinted many had done in Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.

The contrasts between Zimbabwe and South Africa’s agricultural sector and land reform efforts have been widely commented upon. South Africa of course does not have the same type of agrarian economy as Zimbabwe, and many people have not had recent experiences of farming, even if living in rural areas. South Africa’s land reform has focused on attempting to emulate ‘commercial’ farming, with inappropriate visions of ‘viability’, often through cooperative group arrangements, and has often failed.

Yet the Malmesbury experience may offer some insights for South African land policy. The opportunities for ‘smallholder’ production does exist, especially when linked to certain value chains, and expecting land reform only to emulate large-scale commercial farming just on a smaller scale is, as so many studies have shown, is bound to fail. But equally this is not simply a land to the people story – as the heightened rhetoric of the Economic Freedom Front and Julius Malema suggests – but an example of where small-scale agriculture can work under certain conditions. And these conditions are quite specific – the N7 farmers have the skills, the market connections and the infrastructure in place to make things work.

South Africa’s land reform debate remains stuck between the government’s formal focus on planned redistribution using inappropriate commercial models and a naïve populist response of handing land out without thinking about how to embed it in a reformed agrarian economy. Malmesbury – and others places around the country from Limpopo to KZN – offer glimpses of what might be if the two false extremes were dropped in favour of something more realistic and appropriate. Maybe Zimbabwe’s lessons from land reform, and the N7 farmers, can indeed export some good ideas and practices to south of the Limpopo.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared on Zimbabweland

 

Sharing results, generating impact: experience from Zimbabwe

One of the many exciting things I did when visiting our field sites in Zimbabwe at the end of last year, was to help hand out a new set of booklets based on our ‘Space, Markets, Employment and Agricultural Development’ project (supported by DFID-ESRC), that has now concluded.

The project looked at how changing patterns of agriculture is influencing markets (upstream and downstream) and employment. We looked at a series of commodities – tobacco, beef, horticulture and maize – in two sites – Mvurwi in Mazowe area and Masvingo district.

This allowed for some important insights to emerge through both qualitative and quantitative work. We have produced a long report if you want all the detail, and some journal articles are in the works. But in our research we are also committed to making findings available to wider audiences. Our prize last year recognising ‘impact’ highlighted this approach. So we have produced some more popular outputs, including a series of much-viewed films (they are short – just 10 mins or less) that I have mentioned on the blog before. The films have been shared in showings in the study areas, and DVDs have been circulated to agricultural offices, training centres, schools and so on. And for those with good enough Internet connections they can be viewed online via youtube (there are hi and low res versions). At the end of last year we produced a booklet summarising the findings, and offering some case studies of how people have engaged with these changing markets, paid for in part by our prize money.

The booklets are in Shona and English, and are available to download here (scroll down to get the new booklets – they’re blue, and uploaded in low res quality so they are feasible to download). They complement our earlier booklets that offered an overview of the findings presented in our 2010 book (these are the green ones!). These proved a massive hit in our study areas, and ‘reading circles’ were formed to share them across villages in Masvingo.

As before we have produced a large print run of the colour booklets. In November-December we distributed over 1500 to our field sites in Mvurwi, Masvingo, as well as Masvingo. These were handed out to the villagers we have worked with over the years, as well as officials in Agritex offices, local government, private sector businesses and others. Not only were people delighted to see themselves and friends and family in the photos, but they were appreciative of the effort to feedback and share results. There have been many conversations of our findings since.

There is much talk about ‘impact’ these days in research circles. It’s become an obligation to demonstrate impact, uptake and so on, but these edicts are often followed rather reluctantly. In the last UK national research assessment exercise, university researchers had to produce ‘impact case studies’. Many were excellent, but there were a few where it was clear that researcher were scraping at the bottom of a rather empty barrel. Much of the research impact business is also rather mechanical. There are endless guidelines, tedious workshops, toolkits and yes inevitably consultants to help you with the process. And so often ‘impact’ efforts are added on after the event, with the funding body deciding (after being critiqued) that they need to ‘do impact work’ on research that has already been done, and with a group of people who are not really ready to do it.

But in my view with ‘engaged’ research (another buzzword), it’s an ethical obligation to feedback, link with research users and find ways that your research has resonance – and from the very beginning of all research efforts. Impact may not be immediate, and may require years and years of engaging before a moment arises when the research becomes relevant and useful. It may also be highly unexpected, with engagements from unusual sources. This is the problem with the approach to ‘compulsory’ impact, as people are forced to demonstrate impact and uptake in rather inane ways, when actually it wasn’t appropriate.

I am in the lucky position of working with an amazing group of people in Zimbabwe and over a long period of time. This is how we can have impact, but it is slow, patient and cumulative, and requires multiple strategies. These booklets are our latest effort: do read them!

This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

 

Land and commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe: new findings

Over the last few years we have been studying the relationships between land, markets and employment in commercial agriculture Zimbabwe through the SMEAD project, supported by the UK’s DFID-ESRC ‘Growth Research Programme’, and coordinated by PLAAS at UWC in South Africa as part of a regional, comparative study (research has also been completed in South Africa and Malawi). In Zimbabwe, the work has focused on Mvurwi area of Mazowe district and the Wondedzo area of Masvingo district, contrasting a high and low potential area.

The final report is now out, along with a briefing paper. I have already alerted readers to the series of films (‘Making Markets – in high and low res) we have made on the 3 commodities that we focused on in Zimbabwe – tobacco, horticulture and beef. Please do check out the publications and videos to get more detail. This blog offers some highlights of key findings and recommendations emerging from the work.

Despite many challenges, Zimbabwe’s agrarian economy is generating new economic activity and new employment because it is more locally rooted following land reform. Our research shows however how, while economic linkages generated by agriculture create opportunities, the distribution of benefits is patchy; some succeed and are accumulating, while others are not.

There are many challenges ahead. This blog has often focused on practical and policy challenges associated with agricultural production. These include for the need for a reliable supply of affordable fertilisers; the need for enhanced extension and service support, including through mobile phones and the Internet; the need for investment in water management and irrigation facilities; and the requirements of tenure security to encourage investment.

In our work in the SMEAD-Zimbabwe project, we focus on key recommendations for supporting economic linkages and the non-farm rural economy. These include:

• Investment in rural infrastructure is essential. Restructuring rural production and economic activity following land reform requires a new configuration of infrastructure – roads, electrification, network coverage for mobile phones, market sites and storage facilities, business centres and so on. This is urgently required in order to facilitate the growth of economic linkages and support for the non-farm rural economy.
• Encouragement of market information services via mobile phones, text messaging and the Internet will assist in increasing knowledge of prices and market options for farmers, input suppliers, service providers and other entrepreneurs, and help develop a more market-targeted approach, avoiding gluts and price crashes.
• Contract farming arrangements for certain crops eases capital constraints, provides inputs and offsets some risks. In the tobacco sector, the Chinese company, Tian Ze, has contracted a number of (mostly larger) resettlement farmers, but has been key in supporting sales from the auction floors, and the wider contracting system for tobacco. However contracting needs sensitive regulation to protect all parties.
• Finance and credit is extremely limited, and constrains on and off-farm business development. Bank loans are concentrated on contracting companies, and so a limited suite of crops and activities. Access to finance for others is constrained by major problems of liquidity in the banking and finance sector. There is need for low interest finance for farm and non-farm business activities. Rules and regulations have to be in place to protect financiers and borrowers.
• Small towns and business centres near new resettlement areas are often booming, providing services, markets and employment. As ‘growth poles’, basic support for their sustained expansion is required, including infrastructure investments, and the facilitation of informal, small-scale trade and service supply.
• Training in business development skills for farmers, service providers and technology manufacturers will help in the upgrading of business opportunities, particularly for youth and others without land, so they can participate in a local non-farm economy. Business training – including the issuing of business management certificates – is essential.
• Investment in developing value addition from agricultural production is vital. This includes drying and bottling facilities for vegetables and meat products, as well as small-scale food selling, compliant with food hygiene and safety standards. Tobacco farmers lose on rejected leaf and sweepings. Value addition could involve technologies to make manures, as done by companies such as Nico Orgo.
• Private sector-led agricultural trade, input supply and service support is often hampered by restrictive regulations and by-laws, combined with often punitive taxes and charges. Policy and regulatory reform to support the growth of small-scale businesses linked to agriculture in the rural areas is a priority. Local councils/government need to do away with out-dated rules and regulations that hinder the initiation and growth of new small businesses.

Zimbabwe’s rural economies are undergoing rapid change following land reform. However, redistributing the land was only the first step. Building sustainable local economic growth that generates employment and is rooted in vibrant rural markets is a longer process, requiring continued support. Local economic growth is being generated by a new vibrancy in the agricultural sector created by land reform. But for the full potentials to be realised, and for the benefits to be shared widely, greater investment in the conditions required – including infrastructure, skills, regulations and policy – is needed if Zimbabwe’s agricultural revolution is really to take off.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Africa’s Land Rush: Rural Livelihoods and Agrarian Change – a new book

There is a rush on for African farmland – a phenomenon unmatched since colonial times. Africa’s land rush, and the implications for rural livelihoods and agrarian change, is the subject of a new book that I have edited together with Ruth Hall (from PLAAS at UWC, South Africa) and Dzodzi Tsikata (ISSER, University of Ghana at Legon). It includes a series of cases from Africa, written by researchers associated with the land theme of the Future Agricultures Consortium, and you can get a taste of the content from the introductory chapter, available here. The book is available from James Currey publishers (and for a 25% discount here). You can also buy it in all good bookshops  – and if you must, Amazon. It was launched in Cape Town last week at the Book Lounge.

By some estimates, 70% of the land transacted globally in large-scale deals in recent years has been in Africa, often considered the world’s last reserve of unused and under-utilised fertile and irrigable farmland. This is what has lured investors motivated by rising food prices, by growing demand for ‘green’ energy, and by the allure of cheap land and free water. But governments have often allocated to investors land that is occupied, used, or claimed through custom by local people, resulting in disrupted livelihoods and even conflict.

The case studies in the book show the striking diversity of such deals: white Zimbabwean farmers in northern Nigeria, Dutch and American joint ventures in Ghana, an Indian agricultural company in Ethiopia’s hinterland, European investors in Kenya’s drylands and a Canadian biofuel company on its coast, South African sugar agribusiness in Tanzania’s southern growth corridor, in Malawi’s ‘Greenbelt’ and in southern Mozambique, and white South African farmers venturing onto former state farms in Congo.

In many cases these big international deals were on land that had previously been state farms, and before that colonial estates. In the mainstream narrative of a ‘land grab’, there is little sense of the history of large-scale farming and how this evolved at different moments – and our research shows how recent land deals mimic and even resurrect forms of large-scale farming from the past.

A recurring theme in the book is the pivotal role of African governments – as actors and referees – in large-scale land transactions and how this is influencing change in local agrarian systems. States were willing to make major changes to their economic policies, provide preferential terms and often failed to leverage benefits in their attempts to keep investors coming.

Contrary to the popular depictions of a rampant neo-colonial push, dispossessing local people while investors cashed in, in fact some investors are having a rather hard time of it. New commercial investments are vulnerable to difficult agroecological conditions, changing market trends and local politics. Local people are certainly carrying many of the costs – most commonly, the loss of grazing land, water and forests – but there are also clear local ‘winners’ from the process. The picture is far more complex than has been portrayed in many mainstream accounts.

Many of the book’s case studies document deals that failed. Land was demarcated, people excluded, but in the end investments failed to materialise – or did so only with low levels of production and employment. But despite the African countryside being littered with failed agricultural commercialisation projects (as it has been for decades), there are major changes afoot, as land changes hands, and a new politics of access unfolds.

Such changes in who holds land, how it is farmed, at what scale, with what technologies, and for what value chains are profoundly reshaping rural societies and economies in ways that will have long-lasting impacts. Will farmers become wage workers or move to cities? Will smallholder production persist – or perhaps even thrive – alongside large-scale investments? Will people be incorporated into commercial ventures as outgrowers, and will this enable them to improve their livelihoods, educate their children, and move out of poverty?

While these deals are diverse in their contexts and design, the direction of change is clear: towards commercial production by medium- to large-scale local farmers alongside larger estates, now owned not by colonial powers but by foreign or multinational companies, often in partnership with domestic capital. As with previous moments of enclosure and commercialisation, Africa’s recent land rush is already sparking resistance and counter-movements.

Community responses have varied from enthusiastic support to outright hostility and resistance. In some cases, initial support for investment and the promise of development turned to hostility in the face of disappointments. Within communities, certain groups found new opportunities for employment or for enterprises linked to new commercial operations. But across our studies, many were locked out of these new opportunities and we found people resorting to various acts of resistance including theft, destruction and acts of vandalism.

Since its peak following 2007-08, Africa’s ‘land rush’ has slowed, as the real implications of investment and production have become more apparent, as opportunity costs in other investment destinations have changed, and as drivers such as spiking food and oil prices have abated, even if temporarily. Today, investors are far more cautious in their prognoses for profits: several ‘bubbles’ have burst, not least the hype surrounding biofuels. However, while the land rush may have slowed, it has not stopped. All indications are that global demand for food, fuel and feedstock will continue to drive demand for fertile land and water into the future. Growing African economies and consumer demand in urban centres compound this effect.

As the book shows, the land rush is best seen as one of a number of processes of commercialisation of agriculture, involving financialisation and commodification – not all of which result in the appropriation of land. The story is therefore far more complex than the simplistic caricatures of the ‘land grab’, as either catastrophe or opportunity. While there are both winners and losers in this process, the direction of change is towards large-scale farming linked to global markets. What is certain though is that rural Africa is being transformed in profound ways.

This blog is based on a piece by Ruth Hall for the African Griot, James Currey’s magazine profiling new books

This post first appeared on Zimbabweland

 

BRICS and development: new hubs of agrarian capital

When talking about the BRICS countries and their role in development, there is a lot of hot air surrounding debates on ‘South-South cooperation’ and plenty of warm words offered about ‘mutual learning’ and ‘solidarity’. But it was refreshing to be at a conference last week at PLAAS in Cape Town on the engagement of Brazil, China and South Africa in patterns of agrarian change to start from a different perspective: the influence on development pathways by the BRICS as new hubs of capital. The proposition of the BICAS group – similar but with different emphases to the CBAA project (also affiliated to the Future Agricultures Consortium) – is that we have to understand the origins, political and economic driving forces and limitations of the new hubs of capital, in order to get to grips with new dynamics of agrarian change across the world. There was a huge amount discussed at the conference, and the details are only now sinking in, but let me offer a few first thoughts on the emerging debates and their implications.

Emerging dynamics

Despite the hyperbole often associated with ‘rising powers’, one thing that struck me from across the presentations was the limits to accumulation and the extension and penetration of new forms of capital. There has been much debate about ‘land grabbing’, alongside much misinformation and confusion about its extent, but many of the big investment deals that were profiled soon after the 2007-08 crisis have not materialised, and even very high profile programmes – such as Prosavana in Mozambique, the subject of much debate and a panel at the conference – have not really materialised on the ground.

Capitalist accumulation of course takes many forms, and not always those of violent displacement and dispossession. Instead, a much longer, quieter pattern of accumulation may be happening, driven by a new global configuration of capital. This is what Jun Borras called for southeast Asia, the ‘thousand pin pricks’ of small scale transfers of land and extension of (often) Chinese capital in the region. In Africa too, while land grabs still continue, Ruth Hall emphasised the extension into processing, input supply, agricultural technology including seeds, transport and retail. The multiple ‘value webs’ created are crucial in understanding the impacts of the extension of capital from the new hubs. Compared to dramatic grabs, the slow, cumulative ‘dull compulsion of economic relations’ may have as big an effect in the end. But, participants argued, this requires a different lens to understand its dynamics.

Of course since the financial crisis, the possibilities of accumulation have changed. Africa with its vast land area, and apparent emptiness, was seen as a new frontier. But since then commodity prices have collapsed, and the urgency of seeking new markets via Africa – to Europe and beyond, possibly assisted by aid-funded preferential access and state support from African governments eager for investment – has receded. Africa in particular has proven a tough place to extend business ventures. Red tape, local politics, harsh environments, poor infrastructure plague new capital, just as they have old capital.

Domestic political contexts and economic imperatives in China, Brazil and South Africa have changed too. Talk in China is of the ‘new normal’ where consumption demand stabilises, and growth rates decline from the supercharged levels of a few years ago. As China turns to rebalancing and making the economy more sustainable, the massive commodity demand has tailed off. This of course has a direct impact on Brazil, where the decline in commodity prices, particularly in agriculture, has major consequences. This has combined with the domestic political crisis dominated by corruption scandals and a backlash by the middle classes. Concerns again are more inward looking. South Africa has its own economic and political crises, reflecting its failure to deal with the legacies of apartheid, as discussed on this blog last week. This at one level pushes capital to seek alternatives elsewhere, but also highlights the rather fragile claim to be a ‘rising power’, when perhaps Nigeria will prove its economic might in the region if conflicts in the north can be addressed.

Another theme running through the conference, and now more thoroughly understood thanks to some great new work, is the influence of financialisation. This is transforming land and agrarian change, as new players – be they equity funds, sovereign wealth investments, or banks of different sorts – see land and agriculture as new asset classes and investment opportunities. As Moises Balestro commented, the old landowning rentier class of Brazil has a new ally in financialisation. This transforms the way capital operates – no longer necessarily driven by companies associated with nation states (whether BRICS or not), but often truly globalised flows of finance that upset the notion that new political blocs centred on states rule the roost. Such finance has no particular national character, nor any form of political accountability, yet has enormous power and influence.

The mirror effect

Alongside these changing dynamics of capital and accumulation trajectories, another theme of the conference was how the political economy of the new hubs of capital establish the nature and direction of new investments abroad. This is a strong theme of the CBAA project that argues that the histories of domestic political economies in China and Brazil, and the associated imaginaries and narratives of agriculture and development, strongly influence what forms of agricultural development cooperation arrives in Africa – and so the meanings of agriculture, farming and development, and with this the pathways that emerge through these encounters.

In Brazil the long-running tension and political accommodation of both agribusiness and ‘family farming’ with agrarian reform, that Sergio Sauer and Sergio Schneider both talked of, is exported in various projects and technical assistance programmes. Models appropriate to Brazilian contexts – and reflecting this on-going very Brazilian political struggle – arrive in Africa, resulting in frequent confusion, as various cases under the CBAA project describe.

From China, the tension between ‘filling the rice bowl’ and the need to keep a stable, rural peasantry and the narrative of agricultural modernisation was discussed by Ye Jingzhong. This is also reflected in its ‘going out’ policy, as elaborated in CBAA work by Chinese Agricultural University colleagues led by Li Xiaoyun. Thus in different Chinese Agricultural Technology Centres, emerging from different provinces in China, very different visions of agriculture and development are reflected. There is no one China, and variegated forms of capital, reflected in the range of emphases of Chinese State Owned Enterprises that generally run these centres in Africa.

South African capital as it extends into Africa reflects a more unified vision, with its projection of large-scale commercial farming and vertically integrated value chains. This of course mirrors the historical evolution of South Africa’s agrarian sector, from the apartheid era to today, linked closely to what Ben Fine calls the minerals-energy complex that has historically defined South Africa’s political economy. With the power of large agribusiness even more entrenched by the processes of post-apartheid liberalisation, and now reinforced by financialisation, the extension of South African capital, perhaps especially in retail, processing, transport and logistics, but also technology and input supply is, as Ruth Hall and Ward Anseeuw, described, pushes a very particular logic and vision.

There is thus a striking mirroring of domestic struggles, tensions, accommodations and political-economic dynamics as capital extends from the new hubs. This imposes particular directions for accumulation and investment, and smooths certain paths for capital, and so the nature of investments. For this reason, in order to understand agrarian change, the scope must be cast wider, as much activity is focused on roads, mines and infrastructure development. Across the world, aid and state backed investments in ‘corridors’ and ‘investment zones’ are providing conducive conditions for capital accumulation. New agribusinesses follow on behind, often as the second or third wave of investment. This is a long game, where the quick wins of the speculative post-crash boom have gone, but state-capital alliances are forging longer term patterns, setting in train investments and visions of development framed in very different contexts, as Chinese, Brazilian and South African hubs (as well as Indian, Turkish, Indonesian, Vietnamese and other new hubs) extend their reach.

Beyond the rhetoric of South-South cooperation

To my mind, this is the context in which the high-sounding rhetoric around ‘South South cooperation’ must be set. For Zimbabwe, ‘Looking East’ to China – or to south of the Limpopo to South Africa or across the Atlantic to Brazil – must be seen in this light. While ‘conditionalities’ are not as imposed by the west or the old International Finance Institutions of the World Bank or IMF, there are consequences of engagement. Transfers are not just cash or technology, but much more. They include visions and trajectories of development that were constructed elsewhere, and so carry with them different politics and economic relations.

Talking about the emergence of a class of new entrepreneurial farmer, linked to urban markets, in Tanzania (very similar in many ways to what we see in Zimbabwe today), Marc Wegerif, only half jokingly, commented that being low on the World Bank’s index for doing business may be a good thing, providing some level of protection for smaller, domestic economic players. No-one denies Zimbabwe needs investment, but this conference reemphasised that understanding the wider system of finance and capital accumulation in a regional and global context is essential, so this can be responded to strategically.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared first on Zimbabweland

 

Access to $1000 credit: would this help unleash agricultural commercialisation in Zimbabwe?

One of the repeated complaints of farmers on the new resettlements is the lack of access to finance. This is holding back commercialisation, particularly for A2 farmers with bigger plots but also for those on A1 farms eager to expand, intensify or diversify. All of this needs money, and it is in short supply.

In our studies of farmers’ fortunes in Masvingo, and more recently in the tobacco growing areas of Mazowe, as part of the Space, Markets, Employment and Agricultural Development project, we identify three standard pathways of agricultural commercialisation, each associated with different sources of finance. All are limiting, and available only to a few, or relate only to particular commodities.

The first route is through regular accumulation, investment and saving. This is tough, given all the other demands on funds, and requires real tenacity. Each year profits have to be sunk back into the farm, and new equipment purchased. This is a route we see in the vegetable farmers of Masvingo who by making use of water resources, investing initially in a small pump, have expanded their production and marketing significantly, and after a few years are able to upgrade, with new irrigation equipment, the purchase of pick-up trucks and so on. The regularity and reliability of income from horticulture (if the water is available and the pests can be kept at bay) helps drive this pathway to commercialisation. Some farmers have been very successful, now with turnovers of tens of thousands of dollars, employing large numbers of people and with transport businesses on the side. And all from an initial outlay of a few hundred dollars.

The second route is investment from external income sources. Getting going in farming is often the hardest part, like many businesses. Basic up-front investment is necessary. For A2 farmers with quite large plots – up to 100 or 200 ha – making productive use of this land really requires substantial capital investment. Most such farms were formerly ranches in our study areas in Masvingo, and had limited infrastructure. Those farmers that inherited dams and irrigation equipment were lucky, but most did not. A2 farmers tended to have jobs in town, or at least good connections. These were crucial in getting going. But in the economic crisis period, standard government jobs were not enough to live on let alone provide additional income for investing in farming. Those who were able to get going usually had NGO jobs paying on foreign exchange, or had connections overseas. This diaspora and employment money was recycled and invested in farms. Such farmers, unlike their neighbours, were able to rebuild or rehabilitate irrigation schemes, build dairies and farm sheds, as well as purchasing transport – the ubiquitous 1 tonne truck – to facilitate marketing.

The third route we have identified is of course via contract farming. This is important for crops such as tobacco, but also cotton, and through a different arrangement, sugar. This means the farmer does not have to pay for inputs up front, and the contracting company will supply seed, fertiliser, pesticides and other inputs and also take care of the marketing. Increasingly cash-strapped farmers are hooking up with contractors for other crops, including maize. I have been amazed how many readers of this blog get in touch, and ask to be put in touch with a contractor for selling their crop. There is clearly a massive demand for this intermediary function, where those with cash and capital can invest in farming without taking on the burden of actually owning or holding land or producing. Former white farmers are heavily involved, as well as the new black business elite, alongside the standard cotton and tobacco companies, and of course the estates. The terms of the contract may be one-sided, with the risk pushed towards the producer, as discussed in earlier blogs, but contract farming does release cash, in the absence of any other source.

It is this absence of any other source of finance that is striking across our case studies. Rural financial institutions simply are unable to respond. Some say this is due to the lack of collateral due to the land tenure system, but this is red herring in my view, given the possibility of loaning with all sorts of other security beyond freehold tenure. Surely the new farmers who are desperate for finance would open up commercial possibilities for banks and other finance providers. But the financial sector is very conservative in Zimbabwe, being used to a very different structure of agriculture and form of finance. They do not know their new client base and have few incentives to offer new financial products.

Rural finance in Zimbabwe thus has a massive missing middle ground – between the miniscule forms of finance offered by savings clubs and rotating loans schemes promoted by church groups and NGOs and the large lumpy finance offered through the conventional routes. While there have been some state-backed attempts at improving the situation, they have often foundered due to complex bureaucracy, absurd conditions and lack of outreach. The type of finance offered by banks is largely irrelevant to most new farmers (see Tables 4 and 7 in this Finmark report from 2012)

While I have little knowledge the type of business models that would work, my bet is that a company, perhaps initially supported by a development organisation, that could offer a US$1000 loan on flexible terms would have massive uptake and success. This is the sort of amount that is needed, sufficient to buy a decent pump and irrigation kit, sufficient for a down-payment on a second-hand pick up, sufficient to get going on a commercial chicken project, sufficient to buy a beast or two, or some basic farm equipment. This would make all the difference (and there are now some examples supported by USAID and others). It is standard in Asia for example, so why not in Zimbabwe?

While the three pathways to commercialisation noted above are great if your crop is contracted, if you have close ties to someone with a well-paid job, or if you farm a commodity that gives quick, reliable returns, and you can manage to save. But this is not everyone, or every type of agriculture. Today commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe is being held back, and rural finance is probably the biggest blockage.

 This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland

 

Documentaries on land reform in Zimbabwe

A recent review article in the Journal of Southern African Studies by University of Pretoria based Rory Pilossof (see my review of his book in an earlier blog) discusses three film documentaries on land reform. The article in particular takes issue with our work and spends much of it launching a number of critiques. But, despite these diversions, in the end it comes to a sensible conclusion with which I agree wholeheartedly.

The review includes our short films, Voices from the Field, profiling seven farmers in our sample in Masvingo (see also youtube channel). Of course these were never ever thought of as documentaries as they were on average 5 minutes long, and simply as complements to the book and other more detailed material. The other two films are the much hailed, but heavily criticised, Mugabe and the White African (running to 94 minutes and big budget – certainly relative to ours) and the campaign film, the House of Justice, again focusing on farms in Chegutu, including that of Campbell and Freeth at Mount Carmel (running to 24 minutes, and lower budget).

With Miles Tendi and others, I have commented on the Mugabe film – and the even more extraordinary book by Ben Freeth. It is a shame Pilossof did not review Simon Bright’s excellent documentary, Robert Mugabe… What Happened? This is a much more appropriate contrast to the Mugabe film, showing how over a similar length of film, depth, nuance and complexity can be conveyed while still not losing its punch. I have my issues with this film too (as does Miles), but these critiques are not in the same league.

In my view, these three film contributions are very unlike and not really appropriate to compare. Pilossof however mainly uses the article as a platform to critique our work in particular. I will come to a few responses to this in a moment. However his overall conclusion I agree with entirely:

The lack of simple answers and the range of experiences, outcomes and processes make the land question a hugely complicated entity to study. More needs to be done to access the nuances and overlaps, rather than the dramatic and the separate. In part this entails conversations between white farmers, farm workers and beneficiaries…..the failure to situate land reform in the much wider political struggles of this period, and the history that informs them, is much more of a concern….

This is exactly the argument we make in our book, and has been made many, many times on this blog (see blogs on white farmers, labour etc.). Yet Pilossof complains about our film:

“Voices [our film] contains even less historical background than Mugabe and no commentary on the political context of the FTLRP. There is no mention of the violence surrounding the land allocations, of the processes of political patronage in land allocations or, most problematically for Scoones et al, the displacement of earlier land beneficiaries for new groups deemed more worthy”.

It is true in our five minute films we did not cover the whole history of colonialism, nor the wider political and policy context for resettlement after 1980 and during the fast-track period. This was not the intention. They were simply an opportunity for a few farmers, representing the range of experiences we found in the field – different livelihood combinations (farm and non-farm), different crops (market gardening, livestock, cotton, sugar) and different scheme types (A1 and A2) – to share their perspectives and experiences. The choice of seven was not statistically representative at all, and not intended to be, simply offering a range.

Our films were short profiles not full length documentaries, and could only do so much in the time (and a very limited budget). They were always meant to be complemented by the book where pages and pages discuss history, politics, economic context and present data backed by a rigorous sampling frame and both qualitative and quantitative data. As anyone who has read our material and this blog will know, we do not give a simple black and white view about land reform in Zimbabwe, as this review suggests. The films open with the following:

“Chaos, destruction and violence have dominated the coverage. While these have been part of the reality, there have also been successes which have thus far have largely gone unrecorded. The story is simply not one of collapse and catastrophe, it is much more complex. There have been many successes as well as failures”.

The films simply allowed a few farmers to speak, and tell their own story. They were indeed from different backgrounds, doing different things, many with previous employment. Pilossof regards this as a problem, proving somehow that they were not making a living from agriculture on their new farms. They were, but they were also doing other things, both before land reform and since. This is the reality of rural Zimbabwe, and the land reform settlements, something we wanted to get across.

Unlike Ben Freeth and co, such farmers have not had the opportunity to share their experience in their own words to a wider audience. It was heartening to find the BBC interested in following up, and Martin Plaut and his team did a series of interviews with some of those presented in the films. To hear Mr Nago speaking on Radio 4 while eating my breakfast in the UK was a fine change from the usual diet dished out by the BBC and other international media. Yes, these are only one set of voices, but they are important ones surely?

Pilossof then provides another line of attack, claiming that our “entire research project was supported by Agritex”. Yes certainly we worked closely with colleagues in Agritex, but also we worked with others at UZ, AIAS, Ruzivo Trust and so on. We were supported financially by the UK’s ESRC via a grant through PLAAS. All this is very clear in our materials. He goes on: “This collusion with the state is never discussed”. I don’t think we were colluding with anyone, and our work has been widely shared in many fora, and have been always very open in our partnerships. But he argues that we had special freedoms and “…the compromises entailed include a blinkered focus on beneficiaries, ignoring the reform process and its associated violence”. As discussed in many previous blogs we totally reject this claim – and our writing and commentary just simply does not bear such accusations up. He goes on: “Scoones et al are as guilty as Bailey and Thompson [the filmmakers involved in the Mugabe film] (and to an extent Freeth) in refusing to acknowledge the tortured processes of land transfer in Zimbabwe, past and present”. This again is of course quite ridiculous, betraying a lack of attention to our work.

For some reason he seems determined to discredit our work. The overall result is that, by dismissing our findings and inappropriately in my view criticising our film through a false comparison, Pilossoff ends up supporting the interpretations in the other films. To be honest, I would have expected a more thorough argument in JSAS. Maybe I am being overly sensitive as I actually agree completely with his conclusions, even if not with most of his arguments. Take a look at the review for yourself, but I am afraid you will have to pay £23.50 to read it in full (for only 5 pages!) as it’s behind a paywall. Sorry…

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland