The policy of “one man one farm” has to be enforced in a transparent fashion and all Zimbabwean farmers disadvantaged by the 2000 fast track land programme have to be embraced in a new all inclusive land reform programme.

Land reform in Zimbabwe as a means of reducing poverty is an absolute economic and political imperative. The agricultural and non-agricultural sectors have a direct impact on foreign trade and any reform needs to be cognisant of the ramifications caused by the disruptions to organised agriculture.

Prior to the archaic land grab, commercial agriculture used to contribute 40% of market delivery of maize, cotton, groundnut; 90-100% of market delivery of wheat, soyabean, tobacco, coffee, tea and sugar cane; 80% of all commercial beef sales and virtually all milk deliveries. A third of the raw materials to local manufacturing were sourced from the farming sector and contributed 50% of all export earnings through the export of tobacco, maize, cotton and beef, in the normal seasons.

Organised agriculture was 16% of Zimbabwe’s GDP providing employment for 70% of the population and accounting for 40 to 45% of the country’s merchandise exports before ZANU (PF) opted to invade farms as a way of appeasing an agitated rural electorate.

The idea of nationalizing all productive farmland in Zimbabwe, abolishing of all title deeds and replacing them with 99-year leases was ill advised and counterproductive.

If all the agricultural land in Zimbabwe were equitably distributed amongst its 12 million citizens, each person would receive 2.75 hectares of land.

Yet most politically connected people who belong to ZANU (PF) have grabbed over five thousand hectares of prime land each for speculative purposes.

Zimbabwe has a total land area of about 39 million hectares of which 33.3 million hectares are suitable for agricultural purposes and the remaining 6 million hectares reserved for National parks as well as Wildlife and Urban settlements. At independence, agricultural land was divided along racial lines as follows: 6 000 white large-scale commercial farmers controlled about 15.5 million hectares, almost half the total agricultural land in the country, while 840 000 communal area farmers controlled about 16.4 million hectares.

The mainly white commercial farmers held title to about 51% of the land outside urban areas and national parks, including most of the land in Natural Regions I, II and III. This constituted 44% percent of the total land in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s agrarian structure, four different land tenure systems, communal areas, resettlement areas, large-scale commercial farms, and small-scale commercial farms, operate across its five natural regions.

Region I, 613 233 hectares, 1.56% of total land, receives more than 1000 millimetres of rain per year and is suitable for dairy farming, forestry, tea, coffee, fruit, beef and maize production.

Region II, 7 343 059 hectares, 18.68% of total land, receives 750-1000 millimetres of rain per year and is suitable for intensive farming based on maize, tobacco, cotton and livestock.

Region III, 6 854 958 hectares, 17.43% of total land, receives 650-800 millimetres of rain per year is a semi-intensive farming region where severe mid-season dry spells are common. Suitable for livestock production, together with production of fodder crops and cash crops under good farm management.

Region IV, 13 010 036 hectares, 33.03% of total land, receives 450-650 millimetres of rain per year and is a semi-extensive region subject to periodic seasonal droughts and severe dry spells during the rainy season.

Suitable for farming systems based on livestock and resistant fodder crops.

Forestry, wildlife/tourism.

Region V, 10 288 036 hectares, 26.2% of total land, receives less than 450 millimetres of rain per year and is a farming region suitable for extensive cattle ranching or game ranching. Zambezi Valley is infested with tsetse flies.

Forestry, wildlife/tourism.

1 220 254 hectares of land constituting 3.1% of Zimbabwe’s land is nsuitable for any agricultural use.

Almost all member of the ZANU (PF) Central Committee and Politburo have grabbed all the productive farms in Natural Regions I,II and III.

Natural regions IV and V, which are arid and semi-arid and where 75% of Zimbabwe’s poorest people live has been carved into 45 hectare plots for the masses.

These areas present a negative cost-benefit scenario for current resettlement models coupled with an uneconomical livestock carrying capacity for subsistence farming.

Forty-nine percent of Zimbabwe’s total land is forest and woodlands while 12.5% is grazing. Only 8% of Zimbabwe’s total area is arable meaning that about 3 080 000 hectares of land are suitable for agriculture. Only 3.5% of the cropland is irrigated and of this land 120 000 hectares is under full irrigation.

Forty-three percent of the arable land is earmarked for cereal production - 1% wheat, 32% maize, 7% millet 3% sorghum. In 1996 with 26 000 tractors, Zimbabwe used 185 000 metric tonnes of fertiliser and was ranked 46th in the world with a total area of 2 057 685 hectares under cereal cultivation which equates to 5.2 % of the total land area of Zimbabwe.

In 2000 Zimbabwe produced 2 108 100 metric tonnes of maize, 85 600 metric tonnes of sorghum and 320 000 metric tonnes of wheat. This healthy food surplus has since been replaced by a 1 000 000 metric tonne maize deficit and a 400 000 metric tonne wheat deficit due to antediluvian agrarian reform policies.

Of the 243 centre pivots irrigation (CPI) that were in use in 2000, satellite imagery reveals that only 60 are in partial and active use in Zimbabwe today. A CPI is a self-propelled sprinkling irrigating apparatus that can irrigate about 150 hectares from a pivot point that supplies water and electricity. The model of CPI’s that were imported into Zimbabwe cost an average of US$95 000.00. Equipment worth 18 million dollars and capable of irrigating 50 000 hectares is now unaccounted for.

The government announced that it is about to fork out US$ 10 million dollars for vehicles to give to the 280 senators and MP’s. As soon as Mugabe appoints his full cabinet, another 10 million will be required for vehicles for ministers and other gravy train riders. This combined amount is more than what is required to restore our national center pivot irrigation systems to their pre-2000 level.

If these missing center pivots were operational and competent farmers appointed to manage them, Zimbabwe would easily harvest 500 000 metric tonnes of early-planted maize grain that would be germinating by September 15 after the wheat harvest. The remainder of the maize crop, 1.2 million metric tonnes would be harvested from another 250 000 hectares. With supplementary irrigation, yields would average of 5 metric tonnes per hectare. A total of 300 000 thousand hectares divided into 1000 hectare farms managed by less than 300 agricultural professionals could produce our national grain requirements.

Contrary to popular belief, Zimbabwe is in its fourth land reform and resettlement programme (LRRP). All of which were dismal failures due to corruption, cronyism and partisan allocation of land to incompetent individuals.

The first phase from 1980 to1997, redistributed 3,498,440 million hectares to 71,000 families and the second phase lasted from 1997 to December 2004.

LRRP2 was in the second phase and acquired 5 million hectares between September 1998 and December 2004.

Then there was the catastrophic fast track resettlement phase from July 2000-December 2001 which sought to redistribute 9 million hectares creating 160,000 model A1 communal farmers and 51,000 small to medium-scale ‘indigenous’ commercial farmers.

Four thousand white farmer families have since been displaced together with their 600 000 worker families to make way for 127 000 resettled new farmers through invasions backed by nefarious legislation. Commercial agriculture has been ruined and the poor landless are now poorer than when they started.

The solution to Zimbabwe’s food security lies with its competent farmers, politicians have no business owning agricultural land.

(Source)