Zimbabwe’s embattled commercial farmers said on Wednesday that only an end to the country’s political turmoil and a return to good governance will save agriculture, the mainstay of the economy, from collapse.
An official of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) painted a bleak picture of the state of commercial agriculture in the southern African country, noting that production was down to less than half of normal output this year.
CFU vice president Doug Taylor-Freeme blamed the shortfall on what he called the ”ill-considered and badly implemented land reform process” under which the government of President Robert Mugabe has redistributed white-owned farms to landless blacks.
The controversial programme has led to a ”situation of increased food insecurity and reduced foreign exchange earnings … and the downstream effects on destabilising the whole economy,” Taylor-Freeme said.
”Current land policies, combined with the lack of security and a collateral base for credit, have had a negative effect on the production of most commodities by all commercial farmers [white and black],” Taylor-Freeme told the annual CFU congress.
He said that a prerequisite to reversing the trend is ”a restoration of good governance under an equitable legal environment that respects the rights of all citizens”.
Taylor-Freeme appealed for a resolution of the country’s ongoing political crisis to stave off a total collapse of commercial, small scale and communal agriculture.
”We have had politicians at both ends of the political divide making use of our people to better their cause. We need to say, ‘Enough is enough, sort out your differences soon.’
”Everybody is unhappy about the prevailing situation in agriculture caused by politics.
”Politicians had better resolve the issues soon because there will be no country to govern,” Taylor-Freeme told a small group of about 200 white farmers.
Three years ago, the CFU represented up to 4 500 white farmers, but the total membership today is unclear as some have formed a splinter group that is pursuing legal action over government seizures of their farms.
Another CFU vice president said roughly a quarter of the commercial farmers remain on their farms while the rest have left their land since Mugabe launched the massive land reform scheme. Those farmers still on their land complain of crippling shortages of inputs, hyperinflation — officially at 365% — and bank lending rates averaging 80% per year.
”We have one huge threat to our survival, worse even than politics, and that is inflation,” Taylor-Freeme said, warning his fellow farmers that if it goes unchecked it might ”gobble you up”.
The farming official said the ”calamitous macro-economic” conditions in Zimbabwe, including hyperinflation and critical shortages of cash and foreign exchange, can be reversed ”if current destructive policies are abandoned in favour of rational ones, and international assistance is both sought and quickly forthcoming”.
Mugabe says he embarked on the land reforms to correct colonial imbalances that left some 70% of the former Rhodesia’s prime land in the hands of a minority 4 500 whites in a country of 11,6-million people. – Sapa-AFP