The Sunday Mail
Agrippa Murimbika
After mourning for decades over purported mistakes, gaps and shortcomings of the land reform, my question is on why we should continue crying when we should have learnt the hard way.
Command Agriculture, a success registered during the 2016-17 summer cropping season, was one outcome of the difficult learning process.
The gains have to be sustained indefinitely.
How then do we sustain these gains? How are we going to wean off farmers from Government support? What lessons have we learnt so far and how best can we utilise these lessons to turn fortunes around?
Responsible citizens are obliged to propose solutions to current evils bedevilling their society.
One such evil haunting our agricultural sector, the mainstay of our economy, is that of limited accessibility of finance for our farmers, particularly newly-resettled ones.
Their access to finance is greatly hindered by lack of collateral, especially not being able to use their farms as collateral to borrow from financial institutions.
The next best alternative available, the 99-year lease, has been utterly rejected by banks as a credible form of collateral due to some perceived inherent structural deficiencies.
For sure, financial institutions should not fund anyone without credible collateral!
A first for Zimbabwe
Globally, Zimbabwe has emerged as an exemplary developing country case study of broad-based economic empowerment through land redistribution divorced from prescribed conventional models (like the willing buyer, willing seller) which are designed for failure or pathetically low uptake from the supply side.
If questions in the agrarian sector remain inconclusive, Zimbabwe runs the risk of becoming a case study on why developing nations should not embark on agrarian reforms that lack external impetus and funding.
I feel Zimbabwe should also be a worldwide case study on “how to conclude the land question after land redistribution”.
It can only come from Zimbabwean minds and that will be a first for not only Zimbabwe, but the whole world.
Conditional and selective land titling
In a land flooded with professional speculators, it would be disastrous to indiscriminately award title deeds to everyone.
Not everyone in possession of that land is a farmer.
At least it is an assumption that needs an audit to prove it wrong!
I am of the feeling that criteria prefixed on the documented level of investments made on a farm should be put in place to determine land titling.
Title deeds must be earned. Yes, they must be earned!
It is not lack of investment funds that is accounting for lack of collateral, but misplaced prioritisation of investments in the agricultural sector. Add greed to the mix. Through remittances and tobacco production, for instance, many farmers have realised significant amounts of income.
However, some have chosen to invest in urban residential properties, luxury goods and even offshore investments.
If anyone deserves the land distributed to them then priority number one should be investing on those farms, thus building collateral and capability to access credit.
We risk failing to appreciate the value of having an acre of land and worse multiple hectares of land, some of which are in strategic locations for marketing and commercialisation. The value of the distributed land can only be appreciated by people with eyes that are not confined within the current horizon as set by the prevailing economic conditions.
Farmers should look beyond the horizon.
Ask any Japanese national what it means to own a hectare of land!
Ask a Briton what it means to own land in Zimbabwe.
If someone owns 10 hectares of land and still does not see the asset value in it, then surely they are candidates for early dispossession.
No amount of aid is going to lift Zimbabwe. There is need for a carrot-and-stick approach to turn the new farmers into productive units. Awarding title deeds to those investing on their farms is incentive enough to see some of these farms taking off. On the push side, we need to assume that everyone on a farm is a speculator and that they have to redeem their name by surpassing a certain level of investment.
Titling, zoning land
Zimbabwe’s land is not uniform in terms of productive potential and availability of and accessibility to markets. A starting point should be in defining new zones beyond the ages old agro-ecological zoning.
A nationwide programme of land titling can be costly, but can be done in multiple stages, starting with prime zones (those with better soils, receive good rains and are strategically positioned when it comes to marketing) and extending to peripheral zones.
After zones are defined and ranked, conditions for “earning” title deeds should be set for each zone, and every farmer should append his/her signature to legally bind themselves to those conditions.
For the presumably few farmers who have already started investing on their land, the first batch of title deeds should be issued in no more than two years.
There is always need to reward good and to tax bad or poor performance.
Each zone should be characterised by a mandatory level of investment required of farmers. These would range from efforts in setting up irrigation infrastructure, livestock stocking, development of plantations or woodlots and movable machinery. I don’t think banks would not agree to saving schemes specific to certain on-farm investments.
There can be irrigation development accounts, livestock stocking accounts, etcetera, and these will not only benefit the farmer in the present but the relationships generated will be helpful even in the future.
It’s high time Zimbabwe did things differently or risk facing doom.
I cannot imagine having someone settled on a piece of land for the past 15 years and not even planting a single tree.
Doing away with 99-year leases
Through 99-year leases, we created a new model of traditional communal lands and the old resettlement areas of the 1980s. Any nation, any institution and even any individual who continues operating the same way they used to in the past 10 years, will never make it in a dynamic and evolving environment which they find themselves in (even by default).
The type of lease to be issued must spell out the importance of the newly-distributed land and should expire within a realistic time-frame. Ten years are enough for farmers on prime land to prove themselves worthy, and 15 years should do for those on peripheral lands!
In the 10-year or 15-year lifespan of the lease, there should be continuous assessment of progress towards set targets for investment. In the infancy of land redistribution, farmers were being discouraged from building permanent structures on the land.
The interpretation (or misinterpretation thereof) is that Government is not so serious about giving them land, and they might be found packing in the near future.
The 99-year leases can also be misinterpreted the same way as the above rumour. It appears as if Government just but cannot confidently say “please you now own the land”! This is decades after commencement of land distribution.
Rolling out land titling: Manpower issues
A nationwide proposal like this will have critics laughing out loud and questioning where resources and staff to implement it will come from given that Government is already overburdened by an unsustainable wage bill.
I beg to differ, we have more than enough manpower on the ground. It is all about re-focusing their efforts to real and measurable issues.
Often times, I have heard even the most learned people lamenting the low extension worker-to-farmer ratio. I am of the understanding that we have some areas where a ward has two Agritex officers, an LPD officer, a veterinarian, youth officer, councillor and even more Government staff.
Is production in these areas significantly different from those areas that do not have any staff working there?
My experience sadly tells me that all these people are just a burden to the fiscus and productively, there is no significant difference!
I will repeat what I stated earlier: “If any nation, any institution and even any individual is still operating the same way they used to 10 years ago, then they are bound for doom.”
If all we want is those same loads of reports from our officers as were submitted generations ago, then doom is knocking on our doors. On a micro level, I have witnessed communities mobilised to form voluntary savings and landing clubs and 10 rural women shared amongst themselves US$25 000 in one year.
With conditional land titling, the focus of extension should be pushing farmers towards saving and investing on their farms. Officers should be capacitated in initiating and managing investment clubs among farmers.
Once they have surpassed a certain threshold of investment, extension services can be provided on demand and the farmers will actually be in a position to foot the bill of services.
Who provided extension services for the commercial farmers who once held this land?
Why do we want to nurture crybabies?
Why should Government foot the bill of extension, which is not proving to be making any impact?
A role for the financial services sector
By financial sector, I don’t mean the traditional perennial candidates for re-capitalisation who were ceremoniously supporting our agriculture while sucking the economy of all its funds. There is need to bring the commercial sector into our agriculture with all commercial ethics being observed by all parties involved.
Two major roles that can be played by the financial sector are savings and assisted collaterisation.
It’s time farmers started developing a culture of formal saving.
With an important programme like collaterisation, well-structured savings accounts can be created to benefit both farmers and financial services institutes.
The farmer will have security of funds.
If these are accounts in which funds can only be accessed after long periods of time, the financial institutions benefit by holding the investment funds for long, a time during which they will be “spinning” the cash.
Commercial institutions can actually enter into agreements with landholders to assist them in reaching their mandatory levels of investment.
Once the investment is achieved, the farmer acquires title deeds which can be held by the financial institution while the farmer re-pays the loan.
With proper legal documentation, this scheme can be mutually beneficial. Actually, Government, together with teams from farmer representatives and financial services representatives, can come up with legal contracts that protect the system against exploitation.
Signing out
The process of development has to be hinged on innovation and generation of home-grown solutions, with minimal external support.
Development means venturing into unexplored territories.
I am glad Zimbabwe has already started on such a route, and the journey has to be completed and an example set for the whole world to see.
Agrippa Murimbika is an agricultural economist who writes in his personal capacity.
