Zimbabwe’s land reform areas twenty years on (5)

What happened on the A2 medium-scale farms?

Medium-scale A2 farms were established in a very different way to A1 farms in Masvingo. They were not the result of invasion and occupation and later formalisation (or not), but through a process of application at a later stage. These application processes were supposed to take account of the qualifications and resources of the prospective farmer, and the aim was to establish a medium-scale farming sector to spearhead the revival of commercial agriculture, but under new ownership. In practice, the process of application was often manipulated, and political pressure was brought to bear. The result is that the beneficiaries of A2 farms are highly variable – many are former civil servants, including well-qualified agriculturalists amongst them, but they sit alongside those with party posts, military and security positions and others.

Our Masvingo sample of A2 farms is small. This is in part because, when the sample was set up in the mid-2000s, the A2 farms were only just being settled, and access was difficult. The contested nature of land on the A2 farms was such that research in these areas was initially regarded with suspicion, and we had to spend a considerable amount of time getting to know key players in each site. The other problem for any researcher of A2 farms is that the owners are often not present, and in some cases very little is happening.

Our Masvingo sample included dryland sites in each of four districts – Gutu (Northdale), Masvingo (Bompst), Chiredzi (Fair Range) and Mwenezi (Asveld). We also had a sample in the sugar estate of Hippo Valley, where a very different form of irrigated production takes place on smaller plots. Here we report on three of the dryland sites (excluding Northdale) (N=20) and the Hippo Valley site (N= 14), but take them separately. A more comprehensive study has been undertaken of A2 farms both in Masvingo and Mvurwi based on a random sample across all A2 farms, which will be shared on this blog soon.

The overall story of the dryland A2 cases is not positive, although there are a few outlier examples where agriculture has got moving. The Hippo Valley settlers irrigating sugar by contrast have fared much better. The disastrous economic conditions through the 2000s, peaking in 2008 with massive hyperinflation, have returned more recently, and it was only for a short period between 2009 and around 2014-15 when economic stability returned, and business investment of any sort was feasible.

Those with external funds – either through jobs or through forms of patronage – have fared best, but it has been a struggle for everyone. Bank credit has not been available, and outside the support through commercial crop contracts or the corrupt and inefficient command agriculture programme have been limited in Masvingo province, and it has been exceptionally difficult to finance farming. The conventional approach to commercial farming in Zimbabwe had always been to rely on bank loans, which would be paid back on harvest, and capital expenditure was sourced from profit, or further credit. This has simply not been possible over the past 20 years.

Dryland A2 farms

Across our dryland A2 sample, today the farms are more occupied, with men dominating as household heads (90%). Women are often quite isolated in these farms, sometimes left to manage the household and workers, and engaged in small-scale vegetable and poultry production. Men are more mobile, and travel to town, as nearly everyone has a car. In the past, 75% of (mostly male) household heads had jobs, but today it is only 20%, as people have moved to their farms, finding it impossible to maintain a job and farm.

Quite a number have retired, and the average age of household heads is today 52. Given the age profile, 60% have adult children between 21 and 30 years old, and 35% of all households have children in this age group who are farming. Many farmers’ children have taken up plots within the A2 farm allocation, even if subdivision hasn’t been formalised. 35% were previously war veterans, reflecting the numbers of A2 farmers who were previously in the armed or security forces. Educational levels are high, with 65% continuing in education beyond Form II, while 55% have Master Farmer certificates, reflecting the need to show farming qualifications when applying (at least for some).

Even though farm sizes are large (average 160.2 hectares), crop production is relatively limited (on average 11.7 hectares was ploughed), with maize production ranging from only 353 kg to 1462 kg per household between 2017 and 2019, with between 65% and 35% producing over a tonne. This is very low productivity, and although nearly everyone adds fertiliser, this is far from the envisaged commercial farming (although this data comes from farms mostly in dry and marginal Region V, as our Gutu site has not been included). Indeed, while 60% and 20% of farmers employ permanent male and female workers respectively, and 45% employ temporary workers, on-farm wage employment is not universal, indicating again the lack of commercialisation. Although 25% received some form of command agriculture support, it was widely complained about, and was not seen as a route to improvement by most. Production overall is lower than many A1 farms on much smaller land portions. Other crops are combined with maize, but in very small portions, essentially replicating small-scale, peasant farm production on huge farms.

The farms in Chiredzi and Mwenezi, however, are largely focused on livestock production, and the large land areas allow for relatively high herd sizes, averaging 72.3 cattle, at quite intensive stocking rates for such dry ranch areas. But despite this, there is relatively little commercial activity, and only 35% of farmers purchased supplementary feed for cattle. On average 6.9 cattle per household were sold in the past year, and only 2.6 were purchased over the previous five years. Goats complement cattle, but they are not produced commercially in large flocks, and the average household ownership is only 9.1.

To complement crops and livestock, dryland A2 farmers in our sample also produce poultry, and broiler production seems a popular activity, with 30% having broiler units, and 10% having contracts for these. Irrigated vegetables are also grown, but usually on small homestead plots, and 35% of households sell these. Off-farm income remains important, and over half have jobs, while 40% of households receive pensions. Half of all A2 farmers rent out houses in town (having now transferred to their farms), and this is an important source of supplementary income.

The forms of settlement on these farms varies considerably. Some maintain the farm as a business, employing a farm manager and supervising from a distance, with weekend visits. Others live on the property and have intensive involvement in the running of the farm on a day-to-day basis. Still others have retired to the farm, and use other sources of income to survive, it being more a retirement home than a fully productive farm. Others try and farm, but have invited family members to join them, creating small villages with subdivided or jointly-operated plots; essentially multiple small-scale farms. In our wider province-wide surveys we explored these patterns, and rather like our earlier study of the ‘small-scale commercial farms’ set up as African ‘purchase areas’ between the 1930s and 1950s, we see various future trajectories, only some of which could represent ‘commercial farming’, as imagined by the land reform planners.

Certainly many A2 farmers are trying, but it is a tough struggle. In many cases, these farms had to be carved out from the bush from scratch. Mr N from Fair Range near Chiredzi explained his story:

It was virgin land when I came in 2003. I cleared just one hectare in my first year. By 2006, I had a small irrigation plot of 3 ha, and then I continued to clear. I was in hospital for a while, and the bush all grew back. I had to start again. In 2011 I hired a bulldozer, and cleared 8 ha. I tried to hire tractors but it was difficult, as local whites discriminated against us. By 2016 I had 40 hectares cleared, but it was a lot of work, and very expensive. I had hoped to rely on dryland farming largely, but the rainfall pattern has changed. I now must irrigate, but the electricity supply is so variable. Right now I am irrigating only a day a week, and I may lose my crop. It’s so difficult! In the last years I have managed to buy new equipment. I bought tractors in 2014 and 2019, and have bought six pumps, a disc harrow, a ripper and a ridger. I also replaced my car in 2014 to get a jeep for this terrain. I have been investing in the farm, but neglecting my accommodation. I am living in this workers’ house, so I plan to build a big house for my retirement.

The average figures presented from the surveys therefore only tell part of the story. Within our sample, like Mr N, there are examples where farmers have managed to get things moving, but this has been incredibly hard. One farmer in Bompst farm for example invested a huge amount early on in irrigation equipment and for a time was doing well, but his business collapsed as inflation took hold. He then abandoned the farm, renting it out to others, returning to his town-based business operation, and has only just returned after nearly a decade to revamp the farm, having secured support through the command programme. Another farmer again invested from his off-farm job, which was paid in foreign exchange, through the economic crisis and it began to build up, connecting livestock production and vegetable sales to a shop and later a restaurant in Masvingo. But in recent years as the economy nose-dived again, the businesses have faltered and even this tightly managed, locally-based value chain was unable to operate in the chaotic currency environment from 2017.

Our wider, province-wide survey of A2 farms found a similar pattern: most were struggling, but a few prospering due to particular conditions, linked to particular financing opportunities. The period of investment from 2009, when the economy stabilised somewhat and the Zimbabwe dollar currency was abandoned in favour of US dollars, was widely evident. This period showed the potential of the A2 sector, but also the lack of resilience of farm businesses, as gains have been quickly wiped out, and investments made then (in equipment, irrigation facilities and so on) are lying idle.

Irrigated A2 farms: Sugar-growing in Hippo Valley

The largely dismal experiences on the dryland A2 farms contrast with those in the irrigated sugar farms in Hippo Valley. Here farmers were allocated on average 20.6 hectare plots, subdivided from former white and Mauritian outgrowers. There has been very limited turnover in this site. One farm in our sample is currently not being used as the owner died and his wife, who inherited the farm, could not cope with the accumulated debts. A plan to work with a contracting firm to produce animal feed for an abbatoir using the centre pivots has been proposed, but not yet realised. One other farm has been subdivided and allocated to two wives as part of an inheritance, but otherwise the farmers who took over the plots in 2002 – or their wives – are still farming.

The average age of sugar farmers is higher than any other resettlement category, with household heads being 57 on average. Those who gained plots were usually well-established men in jobs. In our sample the most common job was being a teacher or headmaster, followed by a sugar estate worker, followed by working for the ministry of agriculture. Some original farmers have passed on, and wives have inherited, with 28.6% of all farms in our small sample being run by women. When farms were taken over, 71% had jobs, but today this is down to 36% as people have retired or decided to concentrate on sugar farming.

With this pattern of household demography, all households have adult children in the 21-30 age range, but none are involved in farming. This reflects the high educational levels of both household heads (93% having continued in education after Form II) and children, who have largely gone on to professional jobs, like their parents. 29% of households receive remittances, including from these children.

Average production over four years is 1570 kg of raw cane in the Hippo Valley site, and this fluctuates considerably less than in dryland farming. Production levels overall among the new outgrowers has surprised many, including the estate management, as we discovered in our focused study of sugar growing in the lowveld. Today, outgrowers, who are producing yields at level if not higher than the estate, are central to lowveld sugar industry.

Since settlement, the estate has provided inputs – including guaranteed irrigation water, fertiliser, replanting ratoons and so on – on the basis of a contract with the mill. While every outgrower complains (naturally) about the conditions set by the estate and oligopolistic power of the mill, the ability to gain finance and inputs and have a guaranteed market is a major contrast to the conditions faced by dryland farmers (and other sugar growers in the region). Other crops grown include vegetables, with several in our sample producing significant quantities, amounting to between US$2000 and $US5000 annual income, alongside a limited amount of maize. On average 3.6 cattle are kept along with on average 4.4 goats, but the main operation is sugar.

All farmers employ permanent male workers, and 93% employ female workers too, and all farms rely on temporary workers for cane cutting and other jobs. The infrastructure of the former farmers is used by the new farmers, including worker compounds and farm houses, previously used by farm owners and their managers. All households in our sample have piped water and electricity and so the general level of infrastructure is far higher than other resettlement farms as it was taken over at settlement.

Sugar production is certainly hard work, but it is profitable, despite the complaints. And when complemented with vegetable production and some maize and other crops produced for own use, plus other off-farm income from jobs, remittances, house rental (43%) and grinding mill investments (28%), the situation in Hippo Valley at least is much better than the dryland farmers on A2 farms.

But across the A2 sites, we heard again and again complaints about the lack of state support. A sugar farmer in Mkwasine/Fair Range complained:

Our ministers just don’t care about us, they don’t know about growing sugar cane. They know maize and tobacco from the Highveld only. We don’t get any ‘command’ support, we are ignored. We don’t get good deals from the company, and we are heavily taxed. The company is stealing the money, as the bosses were corrupt. But we, the farmers, produce the best sugar in the world. Those who came here and just do dryland cropping are better off. They came through their (political) connections and had cleared fields, they continue to get support.

Asked about the future, he said:

We can’t foretell, we can’t predict, we can’t say because of climate change. We don’t know if the rain will come, and if we have more droughts, everyone will suffer and the nation will not have food. This is why looking after farmers is so important.

The story of A2 farms in Masvingo province is therefore highly variable. There are successes and failures, and much depends on the ability to raise finance – through links to patronage (such as via command agriculture), to off-farm jobs (especially if paid in foreign exchange) or to outgrower arrangements for sugar production on the Hippo Valley and Mkwasine (for some Fair Range farmers) estates. However the wider macro-economic conditions are not conducive, and the prospects for many are poor. A2 farms in Masvingo have a long way to go before they can be the basis of a vibrant, new commercial agriculture, and this in particular will require new forms of secure and reliable finance.

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.

Sugar scandals in Zimbabwe’s lowveld

While visiting our research sites in Mkwasine and Hippo Valley in Zimbabwe’s lowveld recently, there was only one topic of conversation among sugar farmers we have been working with in land reform areas: the scandal that has overwhelmed the South African sugar firm, Tongaat Hullett.

A forensic audit by Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) uncovered massive accounting irregularities and the report named most of the top brass of the company, including the top team in Zimbabwe. What’s more, the accounting audit identified land acquired for land reform as an asset that shouldn’t be on the books, immediately wiping billions of Rand off the company’s value.

This episode has sent shock-waves through South Africa’s corporate sector. The company was delisted from the Johannesburg stock exchange, all those implicated have been removed from their posts, and there are potentially criminal charges pending. Not surprisingly, big questions are being asked about the companies that previously audited Tongaat’s accounts.

Sugar deals: alliances between state and capital

Tongaat Hullett is the owner of Triangle estates and mill and the major stakeholder in Hippo Valley, having bought out Anglo-American’s shares. A total of 640,000 tonnes of sugar can be produced per year from two mills. Since the late 1950s, this has been a strategic contribution to the national economy. Ever since the sugar industry was first established in the lowveld with 100 hectares planted by Murray McDougall in 1937, the companies involved – first MacDougall’s Triangle company, then the Hullett company from 1957 then conglomerate, Tongaat Hullett, later – have been a central part of the lowveld political economy. In the estate museum there are pictures of company executives and colonial governors, prime ministers or presidents from the early colonial era to the present. The state indeed invested substantially in the sugar industry – building dams, creating canals, levelling fields and offering land. The state and sugar capital have always been intimately intertwined in Zimbabwe (see the brief history in our open-access JSAS paper).

This was certainly the case during land reform when deals were struck to protect the core estates from land invasions. Concessions were offered and the white and Mauritian outgrowers were expelled in favour of new A2 farmers, but the main business was protected. By all accounts this was agreed at the highest political level. Since then the company has been cajoled into make further concessions, releasing cane land for those local invaders who felt that they had lost out in the early 2000s, and again recently a major new initiative has been started, opening up new land for outgrower cane, and the settlement of more people.

When we started our work in the sugar growing areas in the early 2000s, soon after land reform, the company executives were dismissive of the resettled farmers. How could they possibly grow cane at the level and quality that the estate does? As our work has shown, they have been surprised. Yield levels are comparable to the estate and the outgrower sector is delivering a significant proportion of the cane. With risk transferred to outgrowers and the company acting as a monopoly buyer, this has worked out well for the estate.

But farmers and the company have not always got along well. The company has monopoly market power and sets the terms (even if these are quite good by regional standards), and the exposure of the level of dodgy accounting by PwC has only acted to enrage farmers. For them, this proves that they are being ripped off, and that the company fat cats are benefiting, while they suffer. Growing sugar is hard, and made harder, especially for those in Mkwasine area operating outside the estate, as water and electricity supply is challenging, given the decline in infrastructure. For them, not only the company, but the state – always seen to be in cahoots – are to blame for their plight.

Plantation life and empire economics

Sugar plantations have always been central to the economics of empire. Linked in some parts of the world to slavery, land expropriation and exploitation, sugar, global capital and colonial states are intimately entwined, as Sydney Mintz has so eloquently written about in Sweetness and Power. Yet plantations also have connotations of modernity and progress, creating order and wealth in marginal areas, and with this gainful employment and an export commodity that boosts national economies.

Being in the lowveld sugar areas you can feel this. The emerald green sugar cane is laid out in neat blocks, and the busy efficiency of the tractors, haulage trucks and mills give a sense of unified purpose. The massive engineering works that have gone into ensuring continuous supplies of water to this otherwise dry land are witness to state commitment, with canals criss-crossing the landscape, and the area dotted with sluices, check-dams and ponds. Meanwhile, the country clubs, the golf courses, the manicured village greens, the cricket creases, the football teams and the schools named after sugar heroes of the lowveld, present a sense of another world, beyond the mayhem of contemporary Zimbabwe. The massive Tongaat billboards on the roads welcome you to an almost sovereign space, beyond the nation, with its own rules and security forces.

Plantation life is often a separate existence, where you are provided for; as long as you commit to the deal with the company you can be housed, educated, medically cared for and provided with a job. The remuneration may be poor and conditions bad, but there is not much else among the dry baobabs of the lowveld.

The outgrowers, begrudging and forever complaining, have by-and-large accepted this incorporation into this company world. Many have done well from sugar, faring considerably better than their counterparts on other A2 farms, and with better deals than other sugar producers in the region (see our JSAS special issue on the political economy of sugar in southern Africa). Learning the ways of sugar, and its seasonal cycles, has taken some doing, and many have diversified to avoid total reliance on one commodity, but our data show significant levels of income from most. And this is much more than the pathetically remunerated government jobs that many retired from.

Yet the accounting scandal has upset this accommodation. People are angry at being ripped off. And dodgy accounting is resurfacing resentments around land politics. Noone is very clear about who actually owns the land that sugar wealth is built on. For land reform areas it is clearly state land as it was expropriated, but the estate as whole does not have clear land titles. It was always an accepted arrangement that the estate provided a strategic industry, valued and supported by the state, and lowveld land was cheap and plentiful. But forensic accounting doesn’t take account of vague agreements struck in the early twentieth century, and the deregistering of land reform land may have opened up a larger can of worms, as land rights and control in the lowveld sugar areas are renegotiated.

Sugar and power

What this episode once again exposes is that sugar and power are intimately linked. The state and sugar capital have worked together across regimes in Zimbabwe, incorporating outgrowers – white, Mauritian and more recently black – in this bigger project. The order of the estate, with its facilities and regimented control – meant that a colonial style status quo could be preserved long into Independence, no matter how loudly outgrower farmers shouted or local politicians agitated.

When updating investors in December, Tongaat Hullett tried to put a brave face on the scandal, suggesting that they’d turned a corner, everything had been rectified, and that all would be OK. There is a prospect that the company will be listed again on the Joburg exchange today. But, in the last months, the accounting scandal has changed the game in Zimbabwe. When dubious corporate accounting and colonial land politics get mixed up, things get messy. With Tongaat bosses allegedly fiddling the books to get bigger bonuses, the fragility of the long-running arrangement between state, capital, outgrowers and local populations has been seriously tested. Farmers are more vocal about their rights and demand a greater share from the company. And estate land, and perhaps other assets, are now being contested in ways that they haven’t been since MacDougall’s planting of the first sugar in 1937. An accounting scandal has created a whole new politics in the lowveld, which is likely to run and run.

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

 

Integrated water resource management: panacea or problem?

Integrated water resource management (IWRM) became the buzzword for water resources policy gurus in the 1990s. The donors poured millions into projects, plans, programmes and many, many workshops and consultancy exercises. The idea was seemingly neat and simple. Water resources had to be managed locally at catchment level through an inclusive process involving all water users. Water as a scarce commodity should in turn be priced and paid for through tariffs charged on level of use. This would pay for the management systems, and also for improvements, as well as investments in environmental sustainability. The ‘Dublin principles’ – a worthy list developed at a big conference in 1992 – guided the approach, and included all the buzzwords of the time: participation, gender, decentralisation, good governance market efficiency, and more.

Zimbabwe became one of the test cases. In the 1990s it too had its share of consultancies and workshops, and eventually an Act of Parliament – the 1992 Water Act. This overturned the old colonial legislation that was based on ‘riparian rights’, or the ability to draw water depending on the location of your land. Water and land were thus separated – different ministries, legislation, administrative units and governance arrangements. The aim was to rid the country of the inequitable distribution of the past, now with all water users potentially having access if they could pay. For those who could not pay or access a permit, such as communal area farmers and small-scale irrigators, allocations of water in government dams were made. A new independent, quasi private authority – the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) was established to oversee all water issues, including the market basis of the new regime. The authority was supposed to be funded from the revenues. Catchment councils, as the new forum for managing water, were planned for seven catchments. Different donors became involved, each supporting a different area. It seemed like a dream solution, perfectly suited to the neoliberal age, but with participation, decentralisation and women’s empowerment thrown into the mix.

And then land reform happened. The rapid, largely unplanned unfolding of the land reform from 2000 quickly unravelled the carefully laid plans for the IWRM revolution in Zimbabwe. The donors who were funding the whole operation all withdrew, and the catchment councils mostly ceased to operate. The mismatch between the original design and the new agrarian reality was stark, requiring some major rethinking. Three new papers in the open access journal Water Alternatives document this story, and examine the consequences for IWRM after land reform. These come from a major Norwegian-funded project on IWRM in Southern Africa. The papers by long-term observers of the water scene in Zimbabwe, including Emmanuel Manzungu and Bill Derman, offer some fascinating insights into the history and some of the contemporary challenges of IWRM in Zimbabwe, echoing earlier findings by Sobona Mtisi, Alan Nicol and others.

Changing land use, changing water use

Only one of the papers offers data for the post-land reform period, and this focuses on some A2 farms in the Middle Manyame sub-catchment area near Harare. This is an area where there were previously massive large-scale commercial tobacco and wheat farms (including irrigated winter wheat). They had impressive infrastructure, with large scale water abstraction and irrigation systems, including massive centre pivots that irrigated the huge fields throughout the year. This was really water-intensive farming, despite efforts at improving irrigation efficiencies in the last few decades.

Following land reform, these farms, with a few exceptions, no longer operate, and nearly all have been subdivided into both A1 and A2 plots of varying sizes. All these are much, much smaller than the original properties. The consequence is that the previous irrigation infrastructure is largely redundant; it is mostly inappropriate for the current land sizes or too expensive to run. Much irrigation equipment was removed or vandalised during the tumultuous land reform period too.

Most ‘new farmers’ on the resettlements have also switched their cropping mix. Summer white maize and soy beans are now common, and tobacco is also grown in increasingly large quantities, through contract farming arrangements. Most of this is not irrigated and the only intensive irrigation tends to be on relatively small horticulture plots, reflecting a growth in small-scale market gardening.   In their study of 18 A2 farms near Mazvikadei dam, Hove and colleagues found that although about 60% were irrigating, the new farmers were reluctant to pay the fees for water use to ZINWA. Many claimed that they were not doing irrigation, or if they were did their own abstraction through boreholes or small-scale river pumps. The result has been a massive decline in officially-recorded water use, especially from ZINWA controlled dams, making the market-based response to water scarcity that IWRM offered largely meaningless.

Ignoring politics: IWRM as a technical-market fix

IWRM was a technical-market fix and (especially in Zimbabwe) explicitly ‘apolitical’. It therefore failed to address the underlying political economy of water use and control. While the Water Act abandoned the riparian rights approach in favour of an open market approach, this made little difference in practice. For access to markets for irrigated agricultural water was directly correlated with ownership of land, and the capital invested in it, especially irrigation equipment. And guess who had the land and the capital before 2000? Just the people who had benefited from the colonial legislation – the (mostly) white large-scale farmers and the commercial estates. The result was that catchment councils were dominated by this group as they had a vested interest in maintaining their access to water, and preventing reallocations elsewhere. Through the assessments that they commissioned, they could also influence water pricing, crucial to the overall commercial viability of their farming operations. Derman and Manzungu document in detail the membership of the Mupfure, Mazowe and Manyame catchment councils and the participation in the meetings in the period 1993-2001. The councils were not inclusive, participatory, decentralised and democratic, but were captured by elite interests, making use of their existing assets to leverage further resources at relatively low cost under a new mechanism, backed substantially by (international) public money. Earlier studies have shown this pattern elsewhere, for example in the Save Catchment. Rather than a model of good development, in many ways it was a scandal. Inequalities of power and control over water, reproduced by a neoliberal technical-market fix, were however overturned by land reform, creating a new rural politics of water.

Reviving the catchment councils or a more radical rethink of water resource governance?

So what is happening today? With some funds trickling back through various routes there are attempts to revive the catchment council system and institute payment systems for the new farmers, as suggested by the World Bank backed 2013 Water Policy. But, as already mentioned, there is resistance. The rhetoric of the land reform that ‘land is for the people’ (and so free) is replicated for water. Why should we pay for water? This is the government’s, or indeed God’s, resource, and part of the heritage that has been reclaimed through the land reform.

With a shift in crop mix, a change in irrigation systems towards small-scale gardening operations, and lack of capital to rehabilitate defunct water supply and irrigation systems on larger farms, the demand for water has dropped, or at least shifted to different sources (see last week’s blog). The consequence is that the incentives to invest in water management are just not there. It is not appropriate to berate the land reform for this outcome. A return to water intensive large-scale agriculture, and with this the IWRM catchment approaches, is not appropriate. With a restructured agricultural sector in terms of farm size, cropping pattern and level of capital investment, a radical rethink of water resource issues is required. This cannot take its cue from the past. The challenges are many, but they are different to the past, and so require new institutional and governance solutions.

Certainly, water resource issues have been largely ignored during land reform – in part due to the organisational, legislative and administrative separation that the 1990s IWRM system instituted. But this is not to say that they are not very significant. In fact, water provisioning for agriculture is one of the most important priorities for investment in the new resettlements, as I have argued many times on this blog. New investments should not be large-scale dams nor centre-pivot irrigation installations, but more of a focus on water harvesting, small dams/tanks, and micro-irrigation and pumping – the farmer-led irrigation systems described last week. This is revolutionising how irrigation is practised on the ground. Unfortunately, this thinking by farmers has yet to permeate through to the planners, consultants and donors.

In our work in Masvingo on new horticulture supply chains, we have observed some new water management challenges emerging. These are of two sorts. The first is the competition for pumped irrigation water from perennial and seasonal rivers and streams. There has been a massive growth in market gardening especially near Masvingo, but also other growth points and towns. This has been spurred by investment in small-scale pumps, as well as market demand. This has resulted in some severe competition between water users in particular areas. There have been the beginnings of some local initiatives to regulate use, but this has not be institutionalised. Indeed, this has been made more difficult by the existence of ZINWA and the fear of control and water charging. The result has been that the new irrigators have continued under-the-radar, but without the ability and encouragement to develop new institutions to manage the resource sustainability. Rather than an elaborate top-down, market-driven catchment council system, some more local water user associations for such areas are clearly needed, and should be allowed to flourish and assisted in doing so.

Where a larger-scale response is required is across the catchments (both Save and Runde) in the region, and in relation to water destined for the sugar and citrus estates in the lowveld. The use of water from Mtirikwe dam as well as Bangala, and now Tokwe Mukorsi, has long been controversial. The financial and political backing of the estate companies has always been important for the politics of water. This was not a resource that was going to be open to inclusive management of any sort. This remains the case. Yet the demands for water in and around these dams is growing, especially as farms expand and demands to improve productivity increase. Some ask, why should it all go to the lowveld when demands are local too? Why should we rely on an old colonial division of water that backs (white, in this case South African) capital against small-scale black farming? Why can’t water reform follow from land reform and we take back ‘our water’?

Here again an IWRM solution will not deal with these high water politics. Indeed such a solution, as before, will likely simply reinforce existing inequalities, but with a market gloss. Instead, a wider political solution is required to the politics of resource access across areas, relating to land for agriculture of different sorts, urban areas, wildlife zones and so on. This requires more than a technical land-use planning exercise based on notionally ideas of land suitability, or simplistic community management solutions, but a political negotiation about equitable access and sustainable productivity.

Water resource challenges are going to increase with growing agricultural intensification combined with climate change in the coming years. New institutions and mechanisms, and likely new legislation, will be required. Outdated and inappropriate technical-market fixes such as IWRM that simply replicate inequality and fail to deal with emerging challenges in the new agrarian system need to be rejected.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared on Zimbabweland

Zimbabwe’s sugar politics

In 2000, as land invasions occurred around Zimbabwe, there were many calls for the sugar estates to be taken over. Indeed, there were a number of occupations of ‘white’ outgrower farms on the lowveld estates. This coincided with major strikes, and the burning of large areas of cane. Yet high-level negotiations and political manoeuvring averted wholesale takeover. Despite the rhetoric, the strategic importance of the sugar industry to the national economy was recognised and the state and the sugar companies brokered compromises. The result was the subdivision of former settler outgrower areas in Hippo Valley and Mkwasine estates and their transfer to now around 800 land reform beneficiaries who had applied through the A2 scheme, designed for medium-scale enterprises and suited to those with capital and expertise. The sugar outgrower land reform represented nearly 16,000 ha, leaving about 30,000 ha as core estate land.

How have the new outgrowers fared? In a new open access paper published as part of the Journal of Southern African Studies special issue on the political economy of sugar in southern Africa (see last week’s blog for an overview), we explore this question with data over 12 years from Hippo Valley from 2002. Following land reform, company officials, government extension agents and others were sceptical that the new outgrowers would be able to supply sugar in amounts and at the quality required for Tongaat Hulett’s two mills at Triangle and Hippo Valley. They argued that the new outgrowers were given portions of land that were ‘unviable’, and that commercial sugar growing could only occur on irrigated plots of more than 35 ha. Further, they argued that the land reform beneficiaries did not have the skills for the highly technical and demanding process of sugar production. And finally they suggested that a politically-driven land reform process was inimical to economically successful production, and that the investors would flee, abandoning Zimbabwe for more stable contexts.

The new outgrowers: how have they fared?

In the years since, the sceptics have been proven wrong. Outgrowing on A2 resettlement plots is now a central part of the business, supplying 852,000 tonnes of cane in 2013 of a total throughput of 3.9 million tonnes. Yields are up too, with our sample of cane farmers producing 86 tonnes/hectare since 2009, higher than the estate average of 83 tonnes/hectare in 2014. Outgrowers must hand over 26 per cent of their crop to the mill, and pay additionally for irrigation water, transport and inputs. Many complain, but the company ‘rips us off’ and ‘cheats on price’, but sugar growers have little option, and are tied intimately into the company’s operation. Tongaat Hulett makes considerable profit from its Zimbabwe business ($30 million in 2014), and land reform farmers are central to this. As part of the rehabilitation of cane land, the company (via the Canelands Trust, and supported until recently by over 30 million euros in aid from the European Union as part of the sugar adaptation fund) subsidises the replacement of cane, and improvement of infrastructure.

In our Hippo Valley sample, the average plot size is 24.3 ha (with a range from 9.8 to 58.1 ha), with on average 20.9 ha under sugar. Only four farmers (of 38) have centre pivot irrigation equipment, although everyone has access to canal water. Farm labour compounds exist both in the new resettlements and on the estate, from where labour for the range of sugar production tasks is derived. The new outgrower farmers on land reform plots come from a mix of backgrounds, including teachers, extension workers, estate employees, as well as well-connected politicians and security service personnel. Not everyone is doing well, and some recent arrivals have taken time to establish, but across our sample the levels of production and management are good. Making a go of sugar production is however tough, as explained in one our ‘voices from the field’ videos. Organising inputs, hiring and managing labour, dealing with cash flow, and negotiating with the company is always a challenge. But despite the early scepticism, the new farmers are by and large doing well, investing and accumulating, as well as providing employment and providing sugar for the profitable company mills.

The land reform in the sugar outgrower areas was not a ‘land to the people’ redistributive move to combat landlessness and poverty. This was part of an accommodation of a middle-class demand for land, creating a very particular type of outgrower arrangement, quite different to other sugar outgrower relationships elsewhere in the region, as discussed in other papers in the Journal of Southern African Studies special issue. The A2 beneficiaries are certainly not universally powerful and well connected, but the sugar allocations were definitely not addressing the poor, disadvantaged masses. Nationally, the land reform had to accommodate multiple class interests, and one was the middle-class aspiration for land, particularly in the context of declining living standards, wages and job opportunities in the post-structural adjustment period.

 Zimbabwe’s sugar politics

Zimbabwe’s sugar politics since land reform – and indeed much earlier – involves a complex balance of competing forces. Large-scale international capital, seeing the opportunities for accumulation from the excellent climatic conditions and top-quality infrastructure and increasingly guaranteed supplies of irrigation water, has invested in the area over decades, despite the political and economic challenges. Tongaat Hulett sees Zimbabwe as central to its ability to make profit in the region, and so is prepared to weather the storms of economic and political crisis, and broker deals which are far from ideal.

Politically and economically, sugar is vital for Zimbabwe. Together with tobacco, these export commodities create a particular dependency politics, and are central to the imaginaries and processes of state-making. They are deeply implicated in both national and local politics. Today debates about indigenisation, restitution and resettlement colour these politics, and result in much rhetoric and frequent threats usually linked to the electoral cycle. But in essence the story is the same as it always has been; one about how the state makes deals with capital, and how farmers, and other local people, including workers, are incorporated, and on what terms.

It is such political-economic dynamics, rooted in often fragile, contingent elite alliances that have driven the transformation of the sugar industry, and with it the agrarian landscape in Zimbabwe since land reform. As has been the case since 1937, when Murray MacDougall first planted cane in the Lowveld, a contested political economy will continue to shape sugar, people and livelihoods over the next decades too. And the new land reform beneficiaries operating as sugar outgrowers will be central to the story.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared on Zimbabweland

The sugar rush in southern Africa

The expansion of sugar production in southern Africa has been dramatic. From its early beginnings in Natal to the huge commercial estates across the region established during the colonial era, new investments are being planned. The land rush in southern Africa is often a sugar rush, with the ‘white gold’ promising riches to governments, local elites and large corporates alike.

While sugar consumption is rising with increasing wealth and urbanisation, the prospects for export to the favoured European Union market look more fragile. In 2017 preferential trade access ceases, and with this the huge ‘adjustment’ payments that some southern African countries and sugar corporates have received as aid. Nevertheless the sugar giants, mostly centred on three South Africa-based companies – Illovo, Tongaat Hulett and TSB – as well as new entrants, are still eyeing up cheap land, good soils and water resources for new ventures.

With these major changes underway it is a good moment to review the political economy of sugar in southern Africa. This is what a new open access special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies does. There are 9 papers, with case studies from 7 countries across the region, and a valuable comparative overview of patterns of accumulation in different operations.

The issue argues that the region’s sugar industry provides a useful lens through which to understand current dynamics of corporate capital and agricultural production in Africa. The papers highlight the rapid concentration of corporate control over the past decade, but also the very diverse outcomes across the cases. Capital does not operate in a uniform way, and local contexts, resistances and struggles, and wider political economy make a big difference.

Taking the company Illovo (now owned by Associated British Foods), Alex Dubb shows how it gains high profits in Malawi due to favourable market conditions (notably preferential trade access and protected domestic markets) and  high productivity (combining cheap field labour, land and water with capital-intensive milling). By contrast, Mozambican profits come exclusively from favourable market conditions, while profits in Tanzania, Swaziland and especially Zambia are due to particularly high levels of productivity. South Africa, Illovo’s country of origin, receives low profits, making expansion across the region essential for commercial success. Value relations, at the heart of political economy, are core to understanding accumulation through sugar, Dubb argues. As companies seek to expand their operations, the search for cheap land, water and labour continues. As papers from Malawi and Tanzania caution, attempts at expansion of sugar land through grand development schemes – such as the Green Belt in Malawi or SAGCOT in Tanzania – may result in elite capture and exclusions of poorer people, even when ‘outgrower’ approaches are advocated.

A central theme of the papers is an examination of the diverse patterns of ‘outgrower’ sugar cane production. This is massively different in South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe or Swaziland for example, where starkly different relationships between the estate and mill and smallholder outgrowers (of different scales, and with different involvement in direct production) apply. While often presented as the ‘inclusive business’ solution to corporate engagement with smallholders, it is clear that there is no single model, and relations between corporate capital, states and local producers varies massively.

How then should we understand sugar in southern Africa? Is the sugar industry part of a new developmental frontier in the region, transforming investment, market opportunities and livelihoods with a ‘win-win’ model, centred on linking core agro-industrial investments with outgrowers, as the industry and other advocates claim? Or is it a predatory form of capital, backed by elites and international finance, where production and market risks are transferred to vulnerable smallholders and estate labour; where land and water resources are ‘grabbed’; where a colonial model of exploitative estate production is at the centre, and profits are accumulated through monopoly power?

The experience in southern Africa suggests that these stereotypes rarely apply. While the logic of capital results in a relentless pursuit of profit, state agency and national political-economic context influence outcomes, as do local conditions. Local negotiations, resistances, and accommodations matter. The result is diverse patterns of production and profit, together with different livelihood outcomes for very different types of ‘outgrower’, and quite different implications for different groups of estate labour, as shown for Xinavane in Mozambique, both in terms of gender relations and health and wellbeing.

With the vagaries of the international market dominating, and the changing fortunes of large corporate agribusiness capital in the region so deeply intertwined with this, we cannot predict whether the long-established corporation-state-outgrower relationship will persist. But for now, in all its variety and differing political dimensions, this relationship dominates the southern African sugar sector, and is central to understanding its contemporary political economy.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared on Zimbabweland

 

Water, land and politics in southern Africa: remaking Mutirikwi

A great book is just out by Joost Fontein, now director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. It’s called Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging in Southern Zimbabwe, and is published by James Currey. It’s long and detailed, but important and fascinating (preview here).

It tells the story of Lake Mutirikwi (in southern Zimbabwe near Masvingo) and its surrounding areas, and its influence on landscape and livelihoods through its provision of water. Lake Kyle, as it was formerly called, was completed in 1960, and was part of an ambitious project to provide water for the lowveld for the expanding sugar estates, and a European recreation area around the lake. It served both capital and racial politics, and became a symbol of the European dream for Africa.

Kyle created an Europeanised landscape – removing people to the reserves, creating game parks, and providing irrigation, all through an impressive engineering feat. It tamed nature, created an European aesthetic, and offered white residents of Masvingo and beyond a playground for fishing, hunting, game viewing and more. But landscapes are never static – they have long histories, memories and echoes of past social relations and politics embedded within them. This is a key theme for the book: pasts anchor the present, layered landscapes with multiple meanings are generated and diverse (material) cultures of belonging are combined.

The book starts with 2005-06 and with the fast-track land reform. A sense of optimism and hope is seen in the lands surrounding the lake. Old gravesites have been reclaimed, sacred groves now honoured as part of newly peopled landscape. And with this old disputes and political competition between ‘traditional’ leadership groups rekindled. The land invasions are seen by many of Joost’s informants as a restitution of ancestral lands, and the important spirit mediums of the area – Mai Macharaga and Ambuya VaZarira – reconfirm this.

Starting with the present, then moving to the past and returning to the present at the end, offers an overall story of how landscapes’ characters are hybrid creations, ones that always carry the past with them. The story of the shifts from an ‘African’ landscape to ‘Europeanisation’ through colonialism then ‘Africanisation’ again following land reform shows how politics, belonging, and discursive constructions of landscape are ever shifting. There are frequent ruptures, as new landscape visions are imposed, but also, importantly, continuity, with the past always having an influence on the present.

The book is of course especially fascinating to me having worked in this area for a long time. While our sites, where we have tracked land reform outcomes since 2000, are on the other side of the lake to where the book focuses, the stories are very similar. The reigniting of chieftaincy disputes, as the book explains in some detail in Chapters 1 and 5, has certainly dominated local politics on the Masvingo borderlands with Gutu. Such ‘genealogical geographies’ provide an important historical backdrop to any study of contemporary land use, with what the historian Gerald Mazarire calls nineteenth century “principles of territoriality” revived in a new politics of land. What is nice about this book is that this is not ‘just’ history – based on archive based reconstructions – but very much rooted in the present, informed by fieldwork immersion, and written by someone who really knows the area well, having researched and indeed lived in the area for years.

In Chapter 6, the book takes a bigger, regional view of landscape, and looks at the hydropolitics associated with the provision of water to the sugar estates in the lowveld. This complements the earlier work by Will Wolmer, and provides a useful historical background to our work on sugar and land reform in Hippo Valley. As Joost explains in the conclusion, the experience of Muturikwi is being reflected in new ways with the Tokwe Mukorsi dam, with similar issues around displacement and resettlement, the removal of people from ancestral lands, graves and religious sites, and the creation of a new tourist-friendly lake environment.

At 340 pages, it’s a long and detailed book, sometimes with some rather heavy ‘academic’ language, and a quick review cannot do it justice. But the chapters are packed with fascinating stories and important data. Other chapters deal with spirit control of landscapes, and the intersection of the material and spirit world in negotiating use and creating belonging; the contested relationship between wildlife – including fish and hippos – and people; the legacies of the liberation war and the struggles over land that occurred both during and after the war. All with intriguing, sometimes gripping, stories contained within them. For understanding the complex cultural and political histories underlying land reform in southern Zimbabwe, this is a really important contribution. I hope Weaver Press will produce it in Zimbabwe, but if you can afford it, buy it now!

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

 

Dams, flooding and displacement: the Tokwe Mukorsi dam

Zimbabwe’s heavy rainfall this season has had its costs. The most dramatic has been the major flooding in Masvingo as the long awaited Tokwe Mukorsi dam filled more rapidly than expected. Rather than filling gradually over four years, with a phased process of relocation of people, it did so over a matter of weeks. There were threats to the dam wall, and a fear a major catastrophe might result.

Dramatic satellite images of the extent of flooding have been shared, and SABC broadcast a short news item on the unfolding drama, showing images of the floods, and the damage caused. The flooding has resulted in over 4500 people having to be evacuated at short notice, and shifted to a number of holding camps in the lowveld. It has been declared a national emergency, and considerable resources have been deployed in response. Funds from the US as well as China have been offered, and whole fleets of CMED vehicles have been commandeered to move people. Emergency camps have been established, and feeding programmes instituted.

In December, while visiting our research study site along the Ngundu-Chiredzi road, the first phase of relocation was on-going, and we witnessed a string of trucks, tractors and trailors carrying people and their possessions heading to Nuanetsi ranch. They had left their ancestral lands, their homes, fields and grave sites, with the promise of compensation, new homes and access irrigated land and the water that was to cover where they once lived. But in February, as the scale of the massive rainfall and rapid filling of the dam became apparent, this turned from an orderly, planned move, to an emergency.

The Tokwe Mukorsi dam has been long in the planning. From the 1980s it was part of a strategic development of lowveld water resources, essentially to guarantee supply of water to the sugar and citrus estates. It was always political, wrapped up in national and local lowveld wrangles. Funding though has always been a challenge. The project has been on and off for decades. But in recent years, it has moved ahead, and Italian engineers and local companies have been involved. However, the engineers’ plans had discounted a once in 30 year rainfall event and had projected the gradual filling of the dam on the basis of more common rainfall patterns. This risk assessment of course proved incorrect, prompting the current disaster.

To the credit of the authorities, the response has been swift and losses have been minimised. No-one, as far as I can tell, has lost their life directly as a result. Dislocation and misery has resulted, and the make-shift arrangements at the holding camps have been reportedly appalling. But, everyone agrees, it could have been much, much worse.

This event has raised some bigger issues. We must ask, what is the role of such big infrastructure projects in development? Who gains and who loses? And how should displacement, compensation and relocation be managed when wider development priorities trump local concerns or resistance?

These are dilemmas being faced the world over. There is a wide obsession with the big, prestige project. Nehru proclaimed that ‘dams are the temples of modern India’. The Three Gorges dam in China has become a symbol of Chinese modernity. And in Ethiopia, the controversial Ghibe dam was a pet project of the late prime minister, Meles Zenawi. In the Rhodesian era, of course Kariba represented such a vision. And in recent decades, Tokwe Mukorsi has been associated with a similar rhetoric.

In the late 1990s, the World Commission on Dams made the case building on mountains of evidence that very often large scale is not best. A more diverse approach to water management, involving a variety of approaches to capturing, storing and distributing water is more appropriate. This advice however has been rarely heeded. The big project brings money, patronage, backhanders and more. And big projects can be seen as prestige legacies of particular people and politicians. Engineering development has its appeal: one solution, rather than many; and a technical one that needs a particular type of expertise. Yet the argument about big dams continues to rage. A paper out this month by Antif Ansar, Bent Flyvbjerg and colleagues suggests they are mostly economically unviable, bring massive costs of displacement and again a more diverse set of options is preferable. Not a new argument at all, but stated forcefully with recent numbers.

The Oxford study focuses on mega-large hydropower dams which Tokwe Mukorsi is not, but many of the same issues apply. There was repeated and systematic underestimation of costs, and as the flooding has shown the risk assessments have been found wanting. Tokwe Mukorsi was intended to benefit the large-scale sugar estates in the lowveld, not the local community. Resettlement was of course part of the plan, with a view that those displaced would become outgrowers in new sugar plantations. But will these offers be upheld, and what are the other more intangible losses suffered through displacement? Will those in Chivi who remain behind benefit from the new water? Or will it be ‘protected’ as part of ‘watershed management’, so upstream users lose out to the more powerful downstream? A game park has been mooted for the area, but who will benefit from this, as this takes up the banks of the new lake area?

When the immediate challenges of dealing with the flooding and its consequences pass, these are the bigger questions that will have to be dealt with. The minister of state for Masvingo, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, has asked for new ideas on how to make use of the development potential of this new water. This is a welcome move, as past projects – whether Kyle/Mtirikwi or Kariba – have excluded local people from this conversation. Maybe the new Tokwe Mukorsi water can be used to benefit local development through small-scale irrigation, as well as profiting the estates in the lowveld.

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

Southern African sugar: new trends and opportunities?

Sugar is becoming an increasingly important commodity across the region. New areas are being planted and mills are being commissioned in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Swaziland, Zambia and elsewhere. The implications of the changing sugar (and ethanol) economy were the subject of discussions at the inaugural meeting of the Southern African Sugar Research Network that was held at the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at UWC in Cape Town last week, and we heard fascinating presentations from each of these countries, as well as from South Africa itself.

Most of the regional growth is being driven by the expansion of two South African companies – Illovo and Tongaat Hulett. A review of their turnover and profits shows that significant proportions are being made outside South Africa. For Illovo, a substantial proportion of their profits are generated in their still fairly limited operations in Malawi, while over 40% of Tongaat’s operating profit is derived from Zimbabwe, where revenue increased by 19% and profits by 11% last year. The influence of Southern Africa’s powerful BRICS country, South Africa, is through its corporate sector, and not the grand-sounding government statements full of regional cooperation and integration rhetoric offered at summits.

The region indeed is increasingly important for South African capital. In the agri-food sector, we have seen the expansion of retail, with Pick n Pay or Shoprite nearly ubiquitous, now it’s the turn of the big production players. The availability of land, cheap labour and benefits from state investments in infrastructure (often water supply and irrigation on now defunct state farms) has been important. The EU sugar regime also provides support to sugar industries outside South Africa under the sugar adaptation protocols that exists to support the switch of strategic national sugar industries to new market conditions in Europe. This comes in very handy for South African companies, and helps subsidise operations, and position marketing from a ‘low income country’ base.

Where does this leave the Zimbabwean sugar industry that has since the 1960s been the mainstay of the lowveld’s economy? Since then the industry has produced significant foreign exchange for the national exchequer not to mention employment, ethanol, various industrial products, and of course raw cane sugar which is consumed in large amounts in Zimbabwe. Tongaat Hulett dominates Zimbabwe’s sugar industry owning Triangle and being the majority holder of Hippo Valley. It produces sugar across over 40,000ha of irrigated land, has milling capacity of around 600,000 tonnes and employs around 25,000 people.

In addition, the company deals with the sugar produced by over 800 new outgrowers who were allocated land as part of Zimbabwe’s land reform after 2000. They farm around 15,000 ha, formerly estate and white owned outgrower land, with farm sizes averaging about 25ha. After a disastrous period during the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy, sugar production has increased again, with around 460,000 mt being produced last year. The rehabilitation of sugar land has been assisted by support from the European Union as well as significant investments by Tongaat Hulett and of course by farmers themselves.

Since 2002, we have tracked 38 outgrower sugar farmers in Hippo Valley in the southeast lowveld looking across the years at production levels, input applications, farm investment, labour hiring and so on. Plot sizes now average 24.3 ha, and all are irrigated. In our sample, the average output last year was 1690 mt, produced on 20.5 ha, representing a yield of 83.6 t/ha. This is a very respectable output and yield, and indeed better yielding than much nearby estate land.

As with the other sugar areas, these ‘new’ A2 farmers are relatively elite, mostly men, and come from a variety of backgrounds. In our sample around half were civil servants (47%), while about a third were former estate employees (34%). The rest included NGO workers (3%); politicians (3%), and business persons (8%). 10% were ‘war veterans’, all civil servants at the time of land allocation. Over half were qualified with ‘Master Farmer’ certificates, and their average age is now 53. Today 39% stay at the plot, while the rest commute. 29% remain employed elsewhere, but this has declined over time as more have committed to sugar farming. Many challenges have been faced over the past 12 years, but the farmers are optimistic about the future.

With outgrowers producing a significant proportion of the total output, is this model the likely future for the sugar areas of Zimbabwe? Outgrowing approaches are much touted across the region, but the arrangements differ widely, as we heard in the presentations at the Cape Town meeting. In some areas, local people are offered dividends on land that is farmed by the estate, with their involvement simply receiving a cheque. This approach, exported from some ‘land reform’ schemes in South Africa, is used by Illovo for example in Zambia. In other areas, farmers have very small plots and often receive less than they put in. This massively discourages outgrowers who are forced to grow food to survive in plots elsewhere, as we heard from Tanzania. There are huge variations in the terms of the contract between farmers and the mill. In Zimbabwe, the mill retains 26% of outgrowers’ output to cover costs of milling, transport and so on, while in other countries this proportion is much higher.

The expansion of South African capital through the region is having, it seems, diverse effects. While the ‘logic of capital’ is to seek profit and accumulate wherever it can, it results in different arrangements and different deals – with states, with labour and with outgrower farmers. In some countries this deal seems highly detrimental to local livelihoods and employment conditions, simply resulting in extraction and exploitation. While in others, and this includes Zimbabwe, the deal is more balanced. Tongaat Hulett knows they are on notice in Zimbabwe, given the political pressure for land reform and now ‘indigenisation’. But equally the Zimbabwean state cannot afford to let the sugar estates fail. There are too many people employed, too much valuable infrastructure and too much tax revenue to lose.

Since the estates were first established by Murray MacDougall in the late 1930s, there has been a close interaction between private capital and the state. Sometimes coming in to bail out, sometimes letting the private sector have free reign, the relationship has always been carefully managed, and has always been intensely political. This is true today as it was before. The unspoken deal to spare most of the estates from mass land redistribution has been maintained, and while the estates were initially sceptical at the expansion of the outgrower model with smaller plots that they said were ‘unviable’, they have changed their tune of late. As the success of the outgrowers has grown, the rhetoric has shifted to one of ‘empowerment’ and ‘partnership’, and indeed the company has backed its words with substantial funds for cane rehabilitation.

For the longer term, my guess is that there will be shifts towards more land being released from the estates to new outgrower areas as part of deals with the Zimbabwean state, who will be in need of more high value land for redistribution in the future. Indeed the pressure is already on, with Shangaan leaders from the area demanding that they get a share of the sugar bonanza, while political elites and others have inserted themselves in the outgrower areas; shifting aside others particular around the 2008 election period, including most of the white outgrowers who were originally allocated smaller subdivisions of their farms. Today, the political rhetoric around the sugar estates, as ever, remains high.

For the estate owners, if outgrowers can deliver when given the right support, why not release more land? While outgrowing is often presented as a ‘win-win’ ‘inclusive’ business model for large scale farming, from another perspective it is a perfect solution for the estate and big capital. Trapped in a monopoly controlled supply arrangement, outgrowers take on all the production risks, and have to manage always troublesome labour; and anyway the profits in sugar, many observe, are to be made in milling and processing, not in farming. This is no doubt the logic for the diverse outgrower arrangements being pushed across the region by South African capital. And in Zimbabwe the same, if under rather different political terms, likely applies. Currently, it suits everyone: the company, the state and elite land reform farmers who make reasonable returns. For now at least, it looks like this carefully balanced political-economic deal is the only option for Zimbabwe’s sugar sector.

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

Voices from the field: a successful sugarcane grower from Chiredzi

As I mentioned last week, while I am away on holiday, I am going to highlight a few of our videos, ‘Voices from the Field’. If you don’t want to watch the intro sequence again, run it on to around 1 minute 11 seconds.

This week, I want to introduce Mr Nago and family who have an A2 plot in Mkwasine near Chiredzi. He explains how difficult it was to start up. The land he received was uncleared bush. They have gradually cleared portions of the 66ha. They started with maize and vegetables that brought income, and then increased the proportion of land allocated to sugarcane. Now they have a large area, and Mr Nago is a member of the Sugarcane Development Association.

On-going disputes with the core estate at Hippo Valley resulted in problems for the new farmers, but relations have improved since the film was made, as has the water supply which was previously highly intermittent. Getting credit finance was also a big challenge, although now loan arrangements linked to sugarcane have improved.

Sugar production on these A2 sites is booming, and as Mr Nago explains, cane is bringing income, allowing him to expand the area under production.

For the full set, go to: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZimLandReform

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

What role for large-scale commercial agriculture in post-land reform Zimbabwe: Africa’s experience of alternative models

Much of the debate about the future of Zimbabwe’s agriculture has got stuck in the dualistic trap of contrasting ‘large-scale’ with ‘small-scale’, without thinking about the mix, and the relationships between them. In southern Africa with its colonial inheritance, this dichotomy is deeply entrenched. But with a new agrarian structure, there is a need to escape from this framing and think more creatively about opportunities and constraints.

A recent paper by Rebecca Smalley, published by the Future Agricultures Consortium, and produced as part of the Land and Agricultural Commercialisation in Africa (LACA) programme, led by PLAAS, sheds some light from historical experience from across the continent. This review offers some important pointers for Zimbabwe, when we ask what forms of commercial agriculture makes sense today?

Following land reform in Zimbabwe, there are farms of all sizes, although now dominated by a small-holder sector in the communal, old resettlement and A1 resettlement areas. However in addition there are A2 farms, largely medium scale operations of several hundred hectares in extent, and so-called large-scale A2 farms, that are larger. In addition there are existing estates that were untouched by land reform, including the large sugar estates in the lowveld of Masvingo.

How then should we think of ‘large-scale commercial farming’ in contemporary Zimbabwe? How can a mix of farm types and sizes complement each other? And what lessons can we draw from elsewhere to inform this?

Smalley offers a simple three-way classification of large scale commercial farming operations: plantations (or estates), contract farming (with and without a nucleus operation) and commercial farming blocks or areas. From a review of a vast literature, Smalley suggests that in general (but of course with huge variation), plantations grow one main cash crop; require capital investment; are larger than an average-sized holding; rely on hired resident or non-resident labour, often including migrant labour; and are centrally managed; and ownership may be foreign or domestic, private or corporate. By contrast in contract farming, farmers agree in a written or verbal contract to supply produce to a buyer, usually at a pre-determined price, on a specific date and to a certain quality. Within contract farming arrangements, there are several variants, including one that involves nucleus outgrowing, where contracted smallholders complement production on a central estate. Her third category is ‘commercial farming areas’, sometimes known as farming ‘blocks’. This involves multiple private commercial farms of medium or large scale that are more or less contiguous in an area.

What are the findings in the literature on each of the three commercial farm types/configurations? The following paragraphs are adapted from the executive summary of the paper (although 70 pages long, the paper is definitely worth reading in full, as the literature shows a great deal of diversity, with broad findings nuanced and contextualised).

For plantations/estates, the literature shows widespread evidence of low wages, long hours, poor housing and health risks for workers. Employment conditions are usually best for workers on permanent contracts. With the shift from salaries to piece work observed in recent decades, wives and children have been called upon to help men in the fields. Women are however frequently employed in their own right. Plantations can affect local food production by diverting labour from peasant agriculture and alienating land. It may help with workers’ incomes and wider food security if plantation employees are allowed to work on family farms at peak times, and if residential workers are granted farm plots on the plantation. Some people, including widows and single mothers, are drawn into plantation labour by poverty and landlessness. In other circumstances, plantation employment is more an opportunity to diversify income sources. Pre-existing poverty and inequalities in land ownership are likely to be exacerbated by plantations. These broad findings of course resonate with the Zimbabwe context, as shown by the work of Rene Loewenson, Blair Rutherford and others.

The literature on contract farming asserts that participation in contract farming schemes provides a good earning, income stability and access to credit. Unfortunately such benefits often fail to reach the poorest farmers. There are typically barriers to entry, and agribusiness contractors have been known to tighten the terms of contracts or retreat to own-estate production over time. Two processes of socio-economic differentiation are associated with contract farming: differentiation between participants and non-participants; and differentiation among participants. The literature suggests that positive spill-overs from contract farming, such as technology transfer, can be inhibited by suppression of competition by the contracting firms. There is, however, better evidence for employment and spending linkages. Because deductions are taken from pay to cover advances, cases of indebtedness and exploitation have been reported, although results vary considerably. There can be tensions within the household if the new crop requires an adjustment in working patterns, and if the earnings are paid to a male household head to control. The risks posed by contract farming to food security within the household, and in the local area, can however be minimised by ensuring that some of the pay goes to women, controlling land conversion and introducing a crop that does not clash with the farming calendar, while supporting local food markets. Again, the general findings very much resonate with the Zimbabwe situation. Despite the current hype for contracting and outgrower arrangements, these certainly have their downsides. Although, some of the resettlement models (such as the A2 schemes in the sugar estates) are centred on outgrowing arrangements, many challenges have been faced.

Large- and medium-scale farming areas create jobs for farm labourers. Some workers have been able to use their earnings to expand family holdings or set up their own operations. But in other cases workers are unable to accumulate enough savings or skills to get off the farm. Limited evidence was reviewed on conditions in commercial farming areas specifically, but generally speaking waged farm work is one of the worst paid, most hazardous and least protected of all livelihoods. As with plantations, commercial farms may have legal duties as employers of permanent staff but have increasingly transferred their workforce into casual or piece work. For female labourers, standards and conditions are generally low. Large-scale farms seem to create more local linkages than plantations. For example, there is a possibility that small farmers will adopt the crops introduced by commercial farming areas and that local agriculture will be stimulated, particularly if the commercial farmers or government introduce infrastructure. Many workers are allocated garden plots by their employers, who recognise that wages are below subsistence levels but resist increasing them. Again, the Zimbabwe parallels are clear. Until 2000, large-scale commercial farm areas certainly created employment, but exit was rare, and conditions poor. While linkages did exist, they were minimal because of the economic and geographic separation from small-scale farming areas.

Smalley highlights three overall conclusions from her extensive review (again taken from the executive summary). The first is that although the record of plantation firms as employers has been criticised, the wages and conditions for workers can be better, or perhaps less bad, on foreign-owned plantations than on large farms and smallholdings. This should be borne in mind as we search for farming models that can benefit the rural poor. Before accepting the argument that contract farming, for instance, can reduce poverty because it involves poor smallholders hiring local labour, we should consider the wages and conditions that those hired labourers will face, as well as other dynamics that affect local labour patterns and entry barriers to participation. The second observation is that large-scale agriculture can affect women in many ways, good and bad. This deserves careful study, not only because women have proved to be especially vulnerable to a range of negative consequences from large-scale agriculture, but also because the gender related changes that occur within rural households lead, in turn, to changes in agricultural production and patterns of labour at the local level.

The final theme to emerge is the instability of such commerical arrangements. Large-scale agricultural developments have proved vulnerable to competing land claims, internal financial and management pressures, labour unrest, external events and political opposition. Participants in contract farming schemes may exit while still under contract; farmers’ organisations may evolve into competitive rivals and migrant workers may return to farm at home.

Smalley concludes “we need to think beyond simple models of dualistic African agricultural sectors, polarised into large-scale enterprises and smallholdings, and consider a diversity of social relations”. This review has much relevance therefore to contemporary Zimbabwe. Having moved from a dualistic system to a diversity of social relations underpinning a range of farm types, what types of commercial farming make most sense? Who wins and who loses? And what are the likely longer term impacts?

Commercial farming, as the review confirms, has had a chequered and unstable history in Africa, and no one type can be seen to be most effective – either for commercial gain or from broader based growth and poverty reduction objectives. Most people agree (and I certainly do) that a mix for farm sizes/types makes most sense, but there are no easy solutions. Contract farming, and outgrower schemes, have been much touted as solution, but they have their own challenges. Equally the large estate model may offer a commercial solution, but they remain isolated from the wider economy, and labour always remains a challenge. In the new post-land reform agrarian landscape of Zimbabwe, there are a emerging ‘blocks’ of farms, associated with the A2 resettlements (and some A1 consolidated farms) that offer potential for commercial growth, but only if connected to smallholder areas to supply labour and offer markets.

While we can agree that we must move beyond the dualistic mindset, the question of where to is less clear. This extensive review of past experience, however, can help inform this debate, and help avoid mistakes made elsewhere in the past.