Les Jones: Zimbabwe's Farm Land Lying Fallow

March 08, 2005

News > Zimbabwe's Farm Land Lying Fallow

After taking land from white farmers and giving it to his cronies, Mugabe finds that most of the land isn't being used, and his country continues to be unable to feed themselves. As is typical of these situations, Mugabe is also fudging his numbers. From the Telegraph.

Some 10.4 million acres were seized under a scheme designed to create a new class of black commercial farmer. By Mr Mugabe's figures, 5.8 million acres are lying fallow. Last year, Mr Mugabe boasted of a bumper harvest and said that Zimbabwe no longer needed help "foisted" on it from the United Nations World Food Programme.
His land grab had made Zimbabwe "self sufficient", Mr Mugabe repeatedly claimed, and the national maize crop was a record 2.4 million tonnes.

The Commercial Farmers' Union said that Zimbabwe grew only 850,000 tonnes of maize last year, not enough to meet domestic demand. In 1999, the last year before the land grab began, Zimbabwe grew 1.5 million tonnes. Then, Zimbabwe also earned about �263 million from tobacco exports. Last year, production had fallen by more than 70 per cent and earnings were down to �77 million.

Posted by lesjones

Comments

This should be a lesson to anyone seeking to reclaim assets from colonial invaders: the equipment and knowledge required to run a productive farm are almost as important as the land itself.

There would be a lot fewer hungry people in Zimbabwe if Mugabe had found a peaceful way to transfer land and equipment and knowledge, working with the existing farmers instead of killing them or driving them off.

Posted by: hellbent at March 07, 2005