Posted on 03/25/2002 9:54:27 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Wonder Marisa's first corn crop is tall and healthy, and early bolls of white fluff are already bursting in his sprawling cotton fields.
"We drafted everybody in the family to put seeds in the ground," the new farmer remembered as he leaned on an ancient Yamaha motorbike on one of the pink-earth paths edging his 100-acre farm.
"When I came here, I didn't know exactly how to farm, but I got good advice from the government. It's more work than I thought, but it's quite interesting."
Marisa, 40, a former government civil servant, is one of the success stories of Zimbabwe's land redistribution program. He is a new farmer who has managed with hard work, government assistance and plenty of his own savings to make a go of it in an unforgiving field.
Not many have had such success. Government financial support to help starting farmers has fallen far short of what is needed, and violent seizures of white-owned farms have scared away investors and aid donors. In Zimbabwe, more than a half-million people face starvation as agricultural output has plunged in a nation that was once a major food producer for the region.
Two years ago, the plot of ground Marisa claims was part of a more than 2,000-acre White-owned commercial farm. After President Robert Mugabe's government seized the property, it was divided into 100-acre plots and handed over mainly to civil servants and government supporters eager to try their hand at one of Zimbabwe's most lucrative endeavors.
For most, breaking into farming has not been easy. With the country's economy spiraling downward, the government has been strapped for cash to provide assistance. Most of the new farmers lack background in agriculture. Loans for tractors, seeds and fertilizer have been hard to come by.
"People don't have the resources to start," said John Mautsa, deputy director of the 2,000-member Indigenous Commercial Farmer's Union. "I think they can do well if they have support, but right now a lot don't know when to plant, which fertilizer to use."
"Zimbabweans are very interested in starting farming," Mautsa said. "But they're not always aware of what's involved."
For Zimbabwe and its neighbors, the key question is whether the government's land resettlement effort, a political project to entrench Black land rights, can produce agricultural results. Zimbabwe is blessed with rich soils and mild climate.
"If you don't deliver land, the liberation struggle has not been completed," said George Charamba, a Mugabe spokesman in Harare.
Set amid the low hills north of Bindura, Marisa's farm does not yet have a name.
"We'll pick one after the first harvest," the new farmer says.
But it does have most of what it probably will need to succeed. During his years working at the government's veterinary service and later as the owner of a produce shop and a trucking business, Marisa socked away a decent amount of savings.
Primed and ready to farm
So, when the government offered him a farm last year, the ex-civil servant was able to buy a used tractor, plow, harrow, cultivator and planter, still relatively rare items on Black-owned farms in Zimbabwe.
To help its former employee, the government chipped in about $4,500 for seeds and fertilizer, but Marisa has had to come up with cash to pay hands to help him plant and weed his first crop, a heavy financial burden with the first sale check still more than a month away.
Getting the farm started "has cost a lot of money," he said.
Marisa grew up on a 5-acre plot of corn and peanuts and studied agricultural production in high school and is putting that knowledge to work on the farm.
After consulting with government agricultural extension agents, he chose to seed a drought-resistant variety of cotton, which has thrived despite a severe lack of rainfall this year.
Thanks to timely applications of fertilizer and to thorough weeding, his corn crop also has survived the drought. He expects to harvest 1.6 tons of corn per acre this year, half of what he had hoped for but far more than his neighbors, whose stunted crops have been mostly abandoned to the weeds.
Year No. 1: `Break even'
With the corn "we'll just break even," he said. "But the family won't be hungry, and we'll take some to market."
Marisa's success is an exception this year in drought-stricken Zimbabwe. Across the country, much of the unirrigated land seized from white farmers in the past two years and redistributed to liberation war veterans, peasants and the politically connected has produced little more than weeds and a few shrunken ears of corn.
While the drought is a huge problem, critics charge that the cash-strapped government has not come up with enough money to help finance new farmers, many of whom are plowing with oxen, weeding with hoes and going without fertilizer and pesticides.
The cash shortage has been aggravated by an aid pullout by foreign donors, fed up with violent seizures of white land and, more recently, with attacks by Mugabe's ruling party on opposition supporters in the recent presidential election campaign.
Government financing for the resettlement program "is not enough at all," Mautsa said. "If we don't get external assistance, we're in trouble."
New farmers also have had trouble getting bank loans because the government--not the farmers--holds title to the property, part of an effort to ensure that failing farmers don't sell their land back to the former white owners. While some starting farmers have used their city homes as collateral, most have simply been unable to get credit.
To add to the problems, many of the fledgling farmers just don't have much experience out in the field. While some are former farmhands, many hail from the city.
"Farming is a profession, like being a lawyer or anything else," said Gordon Jiti, a Black commercial farmer who bought land on his own back in 1996.
"Some people think you can just jump in and do well. Maybe you can, if you have a lot of money, but it's not an overnight thing."
Jiti, who earned a college degree in agriculture, worked 20 years as a manager on a White-owned farm and slowly sunk his savings into farm equipment before finally buying his farm, outside Macheke, using the machinery as collateral.
Now he grows more than 110 acres of tobacco, as well as corn, paprika, snap peas and tomatoes.
Proof before the eye
Signs of his success: Several of his more than 150 farmworkers clean dried beans on his porch, onions hang in the carport and his living room is festooned with fragrant packs of prize-winning tobacco, exhibited at the country's annual agricultural fair.
He says anyone can do what he did, but only under the right conditions.
"People need to be encouraged while they're young to study farming. Then the government needs to put people on the land who are prepared and supervised and have financing," he said. "The problem is that most of these people lack the necessary knowledge and those that do have it don't always really want to be out there. They know how much work it is."
Eric Meikle, one of Zimbabwe's remaining White commercial farmers, agrees the state is to blame.
"The government hasn't given these guys a chance," he said of the new land recipients. "If they were taught and had the finances, they could farm as well as anyone." .
But...but...seizing the property of experienced white farmers and chasing them out of the country along with all their experience and business infrastructure and connections was supposed to make the black city folk with no farming experience rich! What happened?
Oh yeah, reality.
But...but...seizing the property of experienced white farmers and chasing them out of the country along with all their experience and business infrastructure and connections was supposed to make the black city folk with no farming experience rich! What happened?
Oh yeah, reality.
Money and success doesn't just grow on trees, it takes work to make a profit. I hope more of these whiners around the world begin to realize the United States of America WORKS for what it has. Of course the socialists here and abroad are trying to change that so it's, WORK FOR THEM.
No, they'll call it the legacy of colonialism and Apartheid. The rand is falling in South Africa and their government blams racism. In Africa, millions of people are dying from AIDS and their governments blame it on racism. The one size fits all excuse to keep from tackling the tough issues and doing things to fix their problems.
Black and white mourn victim of Mugabe mob-[Excerpt] "I can't take the strain any more, it has been going on for two years," he said. Terry Ford's murder was probably the last straw, and so we are going." Like Mr Ford and many others, he was told to stop farming crops two years ago and his cattle were allowed to graze in only one field, as the so-called "settlers" said the rest of the farm belonged to them. Mr Kirstein has produced more than 200 gallons of milk a day for the past 35 years. Many shops and hotels in Zimbabwe are now rationing milk as dairy farmers have, like the rest of the commercial farming sector, been disrupted. ……Mr Ford had spent an anguished night phoning neighbours and the police as Mr Mugabe's militants surrounded his home. The police said they could not assist as their driver was asleep. Finally, shortly before dawn, he went outside, followed by Squeak, and tried to stop youths from stealing a lorry. They rounded on him, beat him and then shot him with his own revolver at point blank range against a tree in his garden. [End Excerpt]
I imagine you're correct. The government owns the land and will take a huge cut.
Their labor will not reward them, it will reward the state. So with no incentive, there will be no work.
Sounds like good, "earth-friendly" farming to me- now that they've embraced organic, natural agricultuarl techniques I bet they'll produce loads 'n' loads of crops....
Absolute insanity!! The farmers and their workers are fleeing, chased down, killed and tortured for bounty.
This horrible experiment in terror isn't letting up, it's increasing. Communists always leave horror in their wake.
I remember listening to Robbie Noel's shortwave program on Rhodesia back in '93 or '94. He predicted this. BTW, I believe, in addition to coming from Rhodesia, he is a member of Free Republic under "Rob Noel."
Carolyn
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