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15 Years After Land-Grabs, Mugabe Invites White Farmers Back To Zimbabwe
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/23/2015 18:45 -0400
File this one away in the “when populism backfires” folder.
A little over a month after announcing that the Zimbabwean dollar – which, you’re reminded, was phased out in 2009 after inflation rose modestly to 500 billion percent – would be demonetized and exchanged at a generous rate of $5 for every 175 quadrillion, Zimbabwe will for the first time rethink the sweeping land grabs which began in 2000 and subsequently crippled the country’s economy.
Many Zimbabwean farmers who have stopped growing food in favor of “green gold” (tobacco) fear they will starve this winter after a severe drought and a generalized “lack of knowledge” left them with a subpar crop that fetched little at auction. Here’s more from Rueters:
Thousands of small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe fear they will be going hungry this winter after abandoning traditional staples like maize, sorghum and groundnuts for tobacco, a cash crop known locally in this southern African nation as “green gold”.
For 15 years after Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector collapsed in the face of President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks, the tobacco industry has been booming, with farmers funded by private firms to grow tobacco.
But this switch, coupled with the worst regional drought in nearly a decade, has left Zimbabwe in a precarious food situation. Many farmers have complained of low prices as the season ends while buyers argue the quality of the crop was poor.
The tobacco industry has become the country’s biggest export earner with over 88,000 growers registered with the tobacco regulatory body, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, in the 2014/15 season, up from 52,000 in 2012.
But the returns are often uncertain and many farmers have been left disappointed.
Industry figures showed that at the end of the selling season this month farmers sold 188.5 million kgs worth $555 million, down 8.5 percent from a year ago when the crop was worth $654 million.
“It was a disaster,” said David Muyambo, 35, a father of four, who earned $74 from tobacco sales this season after investing $1,200 in his crop. “I need to buy food for my family and I have no money.”
Muyambo blames his failure on erratic rains, which decimated his crop, as well as his lack of knowledge on how to apply fertilizer, remove suckers and cure the crop.
Muyambo said he will never farm tobacco again.
With more farmers focused on tobacco, Zimbabwe’s harvest of maize, a staple food, dropped by 49 percent in the 2014/15 season, the government said, which is set to exacerbate food shortages in Zimbabwe, once the bread-basket of the region.
