Zimbabwe has projected another one-million tonne maize deficit this season more than a decade after the then Zanu PF administration embarked on its controversial land reform programme.
According to Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development minister Joseph Made, land put under maize decreased by 19% during the 2011 — 2012 cropping season.
A total of 1 689 786 hectares were put under maize compared to the 2 096 035 hectares planted last year.
The country, which once prided itself as a breadbasket of the region, will again have to turn to imports to meet the deficit.
Made was not short on excuses for the so-called new farmers, blaming weather patterns, among other things for their dismal performance.
The Zanu PF side of the inclusive government is reluctant to admit the land reform programme has been an obvious failure.
There is no dispute that the pre-2000 pattern of land use was untenable, but the agrarian structure ushered in by the hurried reforms was not ideal either.
Zanu PF parcelled out land to people who were not interested in farming at all and the results are evident for everyone to see with consistently poor harvests.
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It is an embarrassment that a country that had a thriving agriculture industry for over a century now relies on aid agencies to feed the majority of its population.
Yesterday we reported Zambia’s Food Reserve Agency said it had exported over 120 000 tonnes of maize to Zimbabwe last year, making the neighbouring country its biggest customer ahead of South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya.
Zimbabwe accounted for 29,09% of Zambia’s maize exports, South Africa (10,39%), Democratic Republic of Congo (3,97%) and Kenya (1,64%). This is certainly nothing to be proud of, but a serious wake-up call for authorities that the honeymoon is over.
One of the major key result areas for the now four-year-old inclusive government was a land audit that would have flushed out non-productive farmers.
That has not happened and the longer it takes the greater the cost will be to our agricultural sector.
Zimbabwe’s economy has always been agriculture-based and as long as attention is not given to its rehabilitation, talk of economic revival will remain a pipe dream.
Made needs to move on from being a purveyor of grim results of crop assessments every cropping season and help the nation plot a strategy to extricate ourselves from this vicious cycle.
