An analysis of state intervention in zimbabwean agriculture through the command agriculture scheme a case study of chegutu farming area

The government of Zimbabwe engaged in a process of command system in agriculture as a way to foster more production, and facilitate more central planning in what is grown, where it is gr

An analysis of state intervention in Zimbabwean agriculture through the “Command Agriculture scheme” A case study of Chegutu farming area

By Peter Uledi

Abstract

The paper argues that a command economy in a country faced with a crisis will only further worsen the crisis than arrest it Zimbabwe has been faced with a food crisis in the past decade causing food insecurity and insufficiency The government introduced the command agriculture scheme in 2014 in an attempt to attaining food self-sufficiency The paper uses a cause study approach of the Chegutu farming area in understanding, how central planning can affect certain developments Agreeing with James Scott in His book seeing like a state, a command economy pays a blind eye to the abilities of the governed, their rational, knowledge and at times capacity The government of Zimbabwe engaged in a process of command system in agriculture as a way to foster more production, and facilitate more central planning

in what is grown, where it is grown and how it is marketed This involves among other things the distribution of inputs and deciding what farmers should produce This had its pros and cons, given an economy like Zimbabwe and how government central planning of such magnitude have failed in other countries like Tanzania, China and Russia Zimbabwe‟s economy formerly referred to as the “breadbasket of Africa” characterised by large commercial farms and large industrial firms that exported most of their production The economic system supply chains, banking system, education system, agriculture extension, etc was structured around serving these large farms and firms The political and economic challenges over the past decade have resulted in a structural shift from an economy based on large, stable, formal enterprises to an economy based on fragmented, fragile, informal enterprises For a decade and a half now, Zimbabwe‟s agricultural yields have taken a knock following the violent land reform which saw the majority of white former commercial farmers being evicted from arable farms Peasants have however reacted negatively to this command system and have caused more food insecurity and financial loss on the part of the government Using a qualitative research methodology the paper will analyze two central plans, one as a problem and the other one which seeks to solve the problem and the sustainability of a command system in which there is a lot of discrepancies in the system

Keywords Command Agriculture, food security, sustainability, Peasants, Control

Introduction

The paper is an attempt to investigate and examine the effectiveness of command agriculture which started in 2014 to help Zimbabwe attain food self-sufficiency in the wake of peasant reaction Command Agriculture as a grand central government plan is used as lenses to examine if whether governments in a crisis economy and unstable political environments, run and mage such programs successfully The government of Zimbabwe introduced command agriculture with objectives of arresting food insecurity, reduce food imports and allow local production, increase farmer‟s income, create jobs and curb poverty The objectives are by far

noble as they are economically relevant but the way the government executed the command systems did not auger well with the peasant's farmer who has now dominated the agricultural sector of the country since the violent 2003 land reform A plethora of causes have been given to explain this decline in grain production inter alia, droughts, the evils of the Grain Marketing Board, poor rainfall distribution resulting in most areas not receiving adequate moisture for planting or to sustain early crop development, chaotic land reform program, capital flight and brain drain of agricultural experts (Stoneman, 1988) Thus most of these reasons can be explained in the failure of the Zimbabwe central planning system The government has chosen farmers to give inputs and produce crops they deem necessary such

as Maize, Wheat, sunflower, and other food crops In an economy that has a 95% unemployment rate, most people had turned to cash crop farming including the farmers chosen by the government It is these very farmers who have reacted negatively against the command system and fought the command agriculture This has seen farmers using inputs to grow cash crops, selling inputs, growing crops not spelled by the government, and selling the produce to the private buyer rather than the Grain Marketing board This has resulted in government spending more on inputs and losing a lot of money through the distributed inputs which are not returning what is anticipated plunging the county into more food insecurity This challenges the notion of central planning in a crisis economy and the rationality of farmers to go against food production schemes Rather than been a solution to food crisis Command Agriculture became a national problem as the government is heavily investing in it

at the expense of other national needs such as health and infrastructure

Methodology

Using both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, making use of newspaper articles, government publications and archival material the research seeks to examine whether recent state intervention in agriculture in Zimbabwe has met its stated goal of modernizing agricultural production for food security and advancing society The study will use material from the Zimbabwe National Archives (NAZ) These materials include annual report, Balance sheet, memoirs, and correspondences between the farmers and the Minister of Agriculture which helped get the official voice on how the industry worked in the past NAZ provide a variety of documents that can be used to explain the role of government in food production and how previous governments especially in the colonial period treated food security issues

Personal perceptions on the role of government in planning will be derived from interviews with commercial farmers and small scale farmers This is important in getting the voice of the ordinary man and the subaltern on how they see the program or they think they are taking part in something good This corroborates government reports on how it perceives its efforts and role in food security Secondary sources will also be used, as they provide a basis for theoretical framework and foundation for the contribution of the study Books and articles, surveys and reviews will be used to explain the state of the food security and also to get scholarly views on what can be the solution The importance of secondary sources is that it provides debates and theories in which the argument can be situated

The paper has three sections which examine the effectiveness of government planning in agricultural production with particular reference to food security The first section traces the state peasant relations in relation to agricultural production and food insecurity in Zimbabwe

It explores the dynamics and the economic, social and political environment of the time in which the country started to import food as a solution interrogating government central planning Section two examines the efforts made by the government to curb food insecurity through Command Agriculture This section in detail analyses the whole process of choosing farmers to produce what, and who gets inputs and why It examines the political economy of production, through financing, and management The section argues that the role of government in facilitating more food production is not bad but how it is done determines the outcome of the project This involves issues of community decision making, skills, and knowledge Section three explores the challenges the program is facing as it involves little to

no local decision making Some of the challenges to be analyzed includes diversion of government resources by peasants to their own projects The section further explores why peasants have reacted negatively to command agriculture and the economic consequences of such a reaction

Historical Analysis of State peasant relations

State peasant relations in Zimbabwe from the time of independence have mainly been influenced by the nature of the state and its policy towards agriculture During the colonial period, the state peasant relations were exploitative as the government favored estate agriculture Soon after independence, a widely populist government which wanted to consolidate its power tried to engage peasants in a positive way and government policies were quite favorable towards peasants By the late 1980s, the government changed its policy

again by encouraging estate commercial agriculture at the expense of peasants (Hyden, 2008) Peasants were exploited, heavily taxed and even dislocated from their farms to accommodate commercial estates as the Zimbabwean paternalistic bureaucracy grew After the economic crumble of the early 1990s, the Zimbabwean government put in place initiatives that tried to encourage peasant agriculture like extension programs but they were not very effective In the decade of 1990-2000 peasants in Zimbabwe played a significant role in the agricultural sector which has always been the most dominant sector of the economy as some of them participated in the export economy of the country This brings up the question on whether Zimbabwean peasants from the time of independence were in fact

“captured” or “uncaptured.” In the state central planning system

The historiography of African peasants in general and that of Zimbabwe, in particular, tries to trace the evolvement of peasant societies and the different aspects coming out of it with the impact of independence This has raised a lot of debates on the nature of peasants themselves, their autonomy against government central planning and if they have any and the nature of their relationship with the state Hyden (2008), propounds his theory of “uncaptured peasants” arguing that African peasants‟ remain outside the realm of the state as they maintain their autonomy from the mainstream economy Ellis (1993, Ng‟ongola, 1986 and Samukonda, 1993), critically assesses the dynamics within the relationship between the state and peasants in most agrarian economies Mhone (1987), looks at the role of government through its agricultural policy in affecting peasant production and the evolvement of this policy from the time of independence as well as the impact of this policy on the peasant economy in Zimbabwe Contrary to Hayden‟s assertion of “uncaptured peasants,” David Hirschmann argues that Zimbabwean peasants have actually always been captured and they continue to participate in the mainstream economy Mandala (2005), gives a descriptive analysis of how Zimbabwean peasants have actually been “captured” by the state and are used in government grand schemes without question Pryor (1990) and B Freeth (2017), investigate the rationale behind government initiatives towards promoting peasant production especially in the 2010 decade and the economic implication on the agricultural sector with particular reference to the command agriculture system

Grain Challenge since the Fast track land reform

As of January 2016, the Zimbabwean Governmentmobilized $260 million to import grain as part of its efforts to avert hunger following a series of serious droughts (The Herald 2016) Maize was the main export followed by wheat and other grains like millet and sorghum By the turn of the 21st century, all this had changed and Zimbabwe was importing food to feed its population Various reasons have been forwarded to explain this phenomenon, on the government side, the ministry of Agriculture blame climate change1, the opposition party blames it on poor government policy in terms of land use and farmers support Nonetheless, Zimbabwe‟s food insecurity can be pointed to the failure of the land system which has seen inexperienced farmers using land, government officials having more than one farms which are not used and the failure to incentive the little farmers that are producing in terms of allowing better prices on the market for food crops and protection against external competitors The result was food insecurity and with the economic crisis the food problems seem to be worsening and the command economy approach adopted by the government makes the situation worse Economic historians have written about the Zimbabwean economy with some scholars such as Mlambo and Raftopolous (2015) referring to it as a „failed‟ economy However, the causes for the negative scale in grain production have received little attention for example by scholars such as (Muzari et al, 2014)

The production of grain has declined to the extent that there is a need for other mechanisms

to provide masses with food In light of this challenge, the paper seeks to examine the role played by government central planning as grain production declines It further seeks to delineate and trace how peasants have responded to such planning over time and space This study has been informed by lack of research in the area when compared to scholarship focusing on the land reform, politics and economic meltdown of the country in terms of its contribution to grain drain causing food insecurity (Moyo, 2014) The study further examines the sustainability of the responses

The article seeks to examine whether state intervention in agriculture can be sustainable and produce anticipated results Following Scott‟s (1998) thesis that states have failed to successfully facilitate agricultural projects due to the lack of local knowledge, the desire to control production and exert authoritarian power on citizens only led to tarnishing local capacity and agility of production This seeks to examine the Command Agriculture projects adopted by the Zimbabwean government in 2014 as a means to increase agricultural production

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Zimbabwe Parliamentary Debates The national assembly Vol 45 No 11 Wednesday 10 October 2018

James Scott in his book “Seeing like a state” discusses the need by states to mobilize people and their properties in order to develop and tame what the environment can offer as a step towards modernity (Scott, 1998, p187) This is captured where he questions how the state can turn uncivilized societies to modernity and the dynamics involved I agree with him that there has to be a certain level of control by the state and a high level of knowledge for it to be successful in doing that In support of that hypothesis, Scott uses the collectivization program carried out by Stalin in Russia which failed to turn the economy around because the state failed to understand the environment and society peasants in particular and how they could be used for the development of the country This reflects failed statecraft in which the state attempts to organize and tries to resettle people for supervised production This also reflects Zimbabwe‟s Command agriculture in which the production is supervised by officials who have been labeled ineffective and corrupt in their conduct The state saw uncontrolled and

„uncivilized‟ societies as a disorder, and potential threat hence the need to centrally control them

However, the argument that there was a need to have planned settlement to have orderly development was just an excuse used by the government to control societies, tap into their labor, tax and earn form what those different societies could give This is because orderly development failed to materialize in the Ujamaa villages where people were forced to resettle and the state-led projects failed (Clark, 1978), the Great Leap forward in China resulted into a disaster as millions of people died due to starvation (Bachman, 1991) This brings the idea that states should find a way to support local community development projects such has been the case with rice growing, of the Tugalogs in Latin America or the Fulani pastoralists in Kenya, because they are contextual and are compatible with the environment in terms of labor, power dynamics, production systems, and climate However, this model has its own problems and it cannot be applied in every setting This leaves Zimbabwe with the need to strike a balance between state control of grand projects and allowing local farmers and local people also to shape the course of development Such should be the approach the Zimbabwean government should adopt in its bid to curb food insecurity lest it plunges the country into more food scarcity

Since 1980, the government of Zimbabwe has been involved in a number of projects to spearhead modernist programs in agriculture which have dismally failed as shown by the increase in imported agricultural; products like wheat and maize (Mutori, 2017) The reasons for such failures include among others, the lack of local communities in the designing of the

program and the idea that the state knows more than the general populace This resulted in the so-called socialist experiment from 1980 to 1990 which ended up creating an economic problem of the negative balance of trade and payment (Makaye and Munhande, 2013) This was followed by the Economic Structural Adjustments Programs adopted in 1992 which worsened unemployment as local industries and farms closed down as a result of international competition due to trade liberalization (Mlambo 1997) Making it worse was the Fast Track Land Reform which destroyed the basis of the Zimbabwean economy in the name

of politics and appeasement for the war veterans What the land reform did was that it killed production, and suffocated manufacturing resulting in the closure of many companies causing unemployment and eventually economic crisis These events only handicapped the country‟s capacity to feed its population despite vast lands and water resources

Command Agriculture

Command agriculture is an agricultural scheme introduced by the Zimbabwean government

in 2014, with the main goal of aiding food self-sufficiency after two years of drought that had affected the country‟s food security The scheme involves the use of government resources and governments policy on who grows what, when, and how Command Agriculture, a brainchild of the government, has rescued thousands of farmers who would have failed to productively use their land owing to funding challenges Under the program, farmers received inputs for free, but are expected to deliver five tonnes of maize each to the GMB In as much

as it allows farmers to access resources, the government determines the production processes which includes a selection of crops and pricing This is similar to the forced cotton production of the 1940s in Mozambique or the Ujamaa system in Tanzania, which indirectly affected farmer autonomy to use local knowledge and the power of self-decision making to produce (Arkaide, 1973) The only difference is that it has taken a new form in which it does not involve the massive movement of people from one place to the other and provides a ready market for different crops produced Command agriculture does not fit into the environmental advantage of production as it defines what a society or community can produce from the environment despite trying to link local production with international commodity markets This has always created a parallel economic system in the form of subsistence agriculture

which provides an alternative to governments irreversible failed projects

Government expenditure on Command Agriculture

The Zimbabwean government took the front role in facilitating agricultural development through the command agriculture scheme Different roles ae been adopted by the government firstly as the sponsor, and facilitator of the production process and as the sole buyer to complete the whole cycle of command control Since 2014 the government has sponsored command agriculture through the provision of fertilizes, seeds, equipment and other inputs that would allow peasants to produce According to the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Settlement, Perence Shiri, the government spent in 2014, $ 155 256

000, 2015, $ 22 529 900, 2016, $163 821 00, 2017, $ 309 641 600 and 2018, $ 521 415 000 Since the government took the role of sponsor it was supposed to help farmers with all the necessary material to facilitate more grain production and help avert food insecurity The figures show an increase in the money spent each year The increase in these figures can be accounted to three factors, the return of the year was not enough to allow farmers to sponsor themselves, or the money was not used in direct farming by those who received it or inputs and or not all farmers sold their produce to the government This meant that the Zimbabwean government was running losses on both ends of expenditure and food production as it meant continued food imports Instead of increased expenditure which should have corresponded with increased yields, there was a reverse in what the harvest record by the GMB showed For financing this scheme the government came up with the Command Agriculture Revolving Fund The revolving fund was sponsored by the private sector, the Chinese government, and the Zimbabwean government This was to bridge the gap of undercapitalized peasant farmers who formed the bulk of the command agriculture farmers This noble idea could not sustain the system because the very farmers who were to be beneficiaries of these funds were victims of a crumbling economy in which they struggled to make ends meet, send children to school and have decent food to eat As of 2017, the government was celebrating having recovered $47, 7 million from the loans it issued under the Command Agriculture Revolving Fund, but however, failing to meet its target of $72 million Despite the money, farmers received being misused farmers did not deliver their produce to the GMB, which dealt the government a huge financial blow By as late as December 2017, 10 000 farmers were still to deliver their maize to GMB Government has also collected $3, 6 million from wheat farmers against a target of $8, 8 million as at November 23 The Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa reported that as of 2017 the government made a financial loss of $ 29.9 million distributed through the Command Agriculture Revolving Fund The Financial Gazette reported that “Out of the 50

000 farmers contracted to produce maize under Command Agriculture, 33 percent fully paid their loan obligations, with 22 percent having partially paid their obligations, while recoveries from others are being made as they deliver to the GMB

To encourage farmers to continue paying back their debt obligations, all fully paid farmers were being prioritized in accessing inputs under the 2017-18 Command Agriculture program

As of November 23, 2017, about 10 053 contracted farmers had not made any maize deliveries to GMB, an indication that these were already defaulting on their 2017 debt obligations Thus to avoid that the government instituted measures to ensure recoveries from the farmers, with monitoring teams deployed to follow up on those who were being made to acknowledge their debts for repayment Such actions by farmers show how the system had faults and a central system of that magnitude in an economy marred with economic hardships, political instability, unemployment, and income-generating activities, the Command Fund became the source of income which was used for other things not meant for its original use It took 3 years for the government to realize that it was further losing money

by giving it to farmers who had no producing capacity The Finance minister said that, “with regards to those farmers who have partially paid, as well as the new farmers, consideration to

be contracted is based on a tight criteria which includes, among others, the need for a farmer

to demonstrate capability to produce,” The absence of effective control and distribution mechanisms had meant that bogus farmers could access inputs through unscrupulous suppliers This also resulted in the abuse of fuel coupons, whose issuance was not commensurate to farmer requirements

As control measures to the loss of money, inputs and other farming implements the government came up with a logistics committee Among the roles of the committee were to consult with private financing partners tightening the distribution and collection mechanisms for both fuel and other inputs All participating farmers were now required to have their contract papers and release orders for inputs collection to be processed at the district level For those farmers required to collect inputs directly from inputs suppliers, Government officials have been stationed at inputs suppliers‟ depots to clear and monitor the collection of inputs by farmers As Moyo (2014) argues that in an extractive setting where institutions are set to extract and not invest, power is misused This is what happened as such committees became corrupt on how they distributed the inputs, by taking brides Institutions for the common good requires transparency first in choosing who runs them and who is run (Ostrom 1990) These committees were far from executing such measures as the members also found

a way in which they could extract from the system which has institutionalized corruption from national levels

The leakages of the system related to the absence of validation processes over the use of tillage vouchers and combine harvesters repairs and collusion between district Command Centre officials and some farmers that could result in inputs collections in excess of requirements determined by Agritex and ward officers The system was too wide and it involved a lot of stakeholders who the farmers found ways to cheat the system and used it to their advantages Participating farmers were required to complete the cost recovery Stop Order forms at the point of inputs collection as a way to guarantee repayment Furthermore, plugging of potential leakages was extended to prevent some ward extension officers recommending farmers without farm or land offer letters to collect inputs, resulting in no recoveries Thus the failure if the Command agriculture scheme cannot be attributed to the peasant farmers but command officials who also gave resources to people who did not

deserve, or even had farms

The yields recorded by the ministry of agriculture contradicts the amount of money spent on maize production especially According to the Minister of Agriculture the tonnage of maize harvested in the period 2014 to 2018 is as follows, 2014, 1 456 153 metric tonnes, 2015, 742

225 metric tonnes 2016, 511 816 metric tonnes 2017, 2 155 526 metric tonnes 2018, 1700

702 metric tonnes Since 2014, the expenditure increased and the yield decreased These figures show something more than just bad rains, uncertainties and just government loss on money but peasant negative reaction to command agriculture There was supposed to be a correspondence in terms of what the government spends and what was produced but because the government-controlled peasants and production, the farmers did the opposite and chose survival overproduction of enough food for the nation This is because the government did not respect the capacity choice and ability of peasant‟s farmers to produce what they could produce best and what they were willing to produce This is what James Scott (1989) argues that command economies pays a blind eye to the governed abilities and how detrimental that can be to development, Thus instead of job creation, food security and increase income Command agriculture achieved the opposite

Furthermore, the government had to increase expenditure on food imports every year Instead

of a decrease in food imports, there has been an increase since the beginning of C.A Figures