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NewsDay

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Cotton loses ‘white gold’ tag

Opinion & Analysis
Quoting the Agriculture Marketing Authority (Ama), the press reported that Zimbabwe’s seed cotton intake, as at July 29, 2016, was 16 million kilogrammes since the start of the 2016 selling season. This was down from 37 million kgs during the corresponding period the previous year.

Quoting the Agriculture Marketing Authority (Ama), the press reported that Zimbabwe’s seed cotton intake, as at July 29, 2016, was 16 million kilogrammes since the start of the 2016 selling season. This was down from 37 million kgs during the corresponding period the previous year.

Tapiwa Nyandoro

The rewards from cotton have discouraged farmers from growing it
The rewards from cotton have discouraged farmers from growing it

The average price offered to farmers is 35 cents per kilogramme. Farmers delivering the crop in 2016 had received free inputs from government. But despite the assistance, there had been a marked decline in farmers growing the crop. Projected output for 2016 marketing season is 50 000 tonnes compared to the previous year’s 100 000 tonnes.

The 2014 crop was 135 000 tonnes.

The picture is a sad one for a country, whose anchor industry is agriculture. The cotton growing and processing industry is dying. And so, indeed, maybe the cotton growers themselves. That breed of stoic women and men, married in the 1940s to the 1970s, and who used to man a “home” in the tribal trust lands, and if lucky, a “house” as well, in the urban townships, is disappearing. The generation grew a lot of Zimbabwe’s food and its cotton. As a group, they kept a large herd of cattle. They eked their hard livelihoods on poor lands, but most of it virgin when they started their families.

The climate was a bit forgiving, with droughts a bit rare. They were also driven by hope that their numerous children, on average six or seven per family, would have a better life than they. The assumption was they would be better educated and skilled, hopefully, never to till the soil in anger, for a living.

The children were their retirement plans and pensions, hence, the generous numbers. Their rural homes would be their retirement homes as well. That generation of peasant but productive, self-feeding farmers is gone. Driving from the rural areas in early August, there was row after row of “owner-less houses”, virtually deserted “matongo” in Shona, except for the odd hired cattle hand.

The average age of a farmer in Zimbabwe may be creeping towards 60, as it is in the United States and South Africa. The numbers may also be shrinking from natural attrition and viability challenges. The US and the likes of Brazil have reacted to this phenomenon by increasing farm sizes, raising farm mechanisation, increasing use of herbicides and pesticides, introducing judicious use of robotics and genetics, thereby, raising productivity per hectare and per farm hand.

Of late, corporate bodies may be replacing the gentleman farmer in the land of the “free and brave”. Massive factory farms are replacing smaller family-owned units. As a result, finance can be secured from stock exchanges and other sources, where it is cheaper and longer term than from ordinary banks.

Zimbabwe, most probably like South Africa, may, however, be facing a drought of committed farmers. The tragedy is made worse by making white farmers feel unwanted, when, given the historical background, roping them into corporate bodies, increasing farm size in the process, would have been, for example, the best answer to American, Brazilian and Canadian competition.

But there seems no recognition of the problem and no strategy in place on what to do, unless the “command agriculture initiative”, recently launched in Zimbabwe can pass as one. In the absence of holistic baseline research findings, inclusive of hydrological survey reports, the agrarian part of the land reform programme may need rethinking. Food security boffins must go back to their desks.

Ama attributed the sad picture in the cotton value chain to poor grower viability, side marketing and poor vertical integration. And to that you can also add a dying generation of farmers, resistance to GMO seeds by officials and soils whose nutrient (humus) content, chemistry and texture have all worsened over the years. The local and foreign markets have also become predatory, while finance has become expensive with increased risk. Corruption then takes the risk to nausea and vertigo causing new highs.

David Whitehead used to be Zimbabwe’s largest integrated textiles producer, employing hundreds of employees directly and more indirectly. Judicial manager after judicial manager has done nothing for its fortunes. At best their interventions seem to have further depleted resources. There seems to be something dreadfully wrong with Zimbabwe’s bankruptcy protection laws.

The story of India’s biggest maker of towels, and their journey from cotton field to big box stores, in particular in the US, offers lessons for other manufacturers.

The Indian company Welspun, has taken business from American companies, who prior to 2005 survived only because of tariff protection and quotas. Welspun achieved this by deploying the latest German machinery to meet American quality standards and compete on economies of scale. American consumers expect high quality and low prices.

Welspun’s factory, recently built on 800 acres employs 14 000, and produces 90 tonnes of toweling a day. At a capacity of over 30 million kgs of towels per annum, 95% exported, it could utilise more than half of Zimbabwe’s cotton seed output annually. It is an example to emulate.

l Tapiwa Nyandoro can be contacted on [email protected] or [email protected]