Published by the government of Zimbabwe
7 May 2008
Harare — The looming global food crisis appears to vindicate the Government's conviction that food security is best guaranteed when ownership of the means of production is in the hands of the majority and not a few individuals and multinational companies.
More than 100 million people in the world are experiencing food shortages due to increases in prices. A surge in food prices has triggered widespread protests in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire and Mexico while the government of Haiti was forced to capitulate. The United Nations last week set up a task force to tackle the global food crisis while key agencies that include the World Food Programme and the World Trade Organisation said they would work to resolve food insecurity.
Addressing a Trade and Development Conference in Accra, Ghana last month, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said the global food crisis was one of the greatest dangers that were threatening socio-economic development in the world.
"If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," he said. The United States triggered the global food shortages when it decided to produce ethanol from maize, a move which resulted in maize stocks declining sharply, creating shortfalls. While farmers resorted to wheat as an alternative, stocks began to fall, sending wheat and cereal prices soaring.
However, the Government has been vilified for implementing agrarian reforms that saw about 11 million hectares of prime agricultural land being expropriated from about 4 000 white former farmers and redistributed to hundreds of thousands of landless peasants. Before the agrarian reforms, the black farmers used to produce the bulk of grain on their semi-arid soils while the white former farmers were producing cash crops such as tobacco, cotton, paprika and soya bean.
Western countries opposed to the agrarian reforms have pointed at the poor production the country has been experiencing due to persistent droughts to qualify their arguments that black farmers were not capable of farming. Western countries opposed to the agrarian reforms have been quick to point at the decline in agricultural production that the country has experienced since 2000 due to persistent droughts as justification for condemning the reforms.
While the Western countries have blamed the poor production on the black farmers who they say are not competent to grow crops, they have conveniently overlooked effects of economic sanctions that they imposed on the country, which have resulted in shortages of foreign currency to procure raw materials to produce critical inputs such as fertilizers, chemicals and spare parts for farm machinery.
Instead of bowing to criticism of its policy nor sitting on its laurels and lamenting the misfortunes that nature and the economic sanctions have caused on the country, the Zimbabwe Government has taken the reforms a step further by implementing a massive multi-faced assistance programme for new farmers, principally mechanisation through tractors and other farming equipment.
Unveiling a recently acquired consignment of state-of-the-art farming equipment from China, Agricultural Engineering, Mechanisation and Irrigation Minister Joseph Made said mechanisation was an ongoing programme meant to ensure maximum production and food security in line with the gains of the land reform programme.
Under a phased programme, the Government was financing through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, resettled farmers have received tractors, combined harvesters, disc harrows, planters as well as irrigation equipment from friendly countries in the East that include China, India and Iran while smallholder and communal farmers have received ox-drawn and hand-held implements. Presenting the 2008 first quarter Monetary Policy Statement, RBZ Governor Dr Gideon Gono said there was need for everyone to "act with audacious commitment to address the global food crisis without any further delay".
Dr Gono reiterated that the policy thrust on agriculture was informed and continued to be guided by a strong conviction that without food security, no credible and sustainable economic turnaround programme could be implemented in Zimbabwe.
As part of measures to ensure viability of farmers and encourage production of the staple crop, the Government last month hiked the producer price of maize from $10 million to over $22 billion per tonne.
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