The main income for 75% of Mozambicans families comes from farming but two thirds of them (3 million families) farm less than 1 hectare and most do not grow enough to feed their families, the Agricultural Census (CAP) published Wednesday (20 May) shows.
Mozambique has a cultivated area of 6.5 mn hectares,18% of the 36 million hectares of arable land available, Minister of Planning and Development Salim Vala said at the report launch. “This means that the future of national economic transformation will continue to be deeply linked to our ability to transform subsistence agriculture into commercial, integrated, resilient and agro-industrialised farming."
But the CAP shows clearly that transformation clearly is not happening. About 1.2 million families (26% of farming families) have between 1 and 2 hectares (ha) of cultivated area, which means they can feed their families with some additional for the market - but they are not yet "family commercial farmers". Only 10% of farmers, about 470,00, can be considered as family commercial farmers, with 2-5 ha. Only 1% of farmers, 58,000, farm over 5 ha.
The survey shows the stark contract between farmer support in Mozambique and its neighbours. CAP reports that only 9% of small and medium farmers use fertilizer and only 7% have access to extension services.
Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn
In Zimbabwe, 75% of small scale commercial and A1 (resettlement) farmers use inorganic (chemical) fertiliser, and many also use organic fertiliser such as manure. Also 75% receive government agricultural extension services and plant certified seeds. (Zimstat 2019) Malawi has similar percentages with 79% of farmers using inorganic fertilizer and of 77% using extension services. (IFPRI 2019)
In Zimbabwe and Malawi these are seen as vital state services. As part of the imposition of neoliberalism on Mozambique two decades ago, the government was forced by the World Bank to abolish its marketing board and reduce the number of agricultural extension agents. In a speech in Ribaue, Nampula on 15 May, President Daniel Chapo suggested these imposed polices might be reversed. But at present, as the CAP makes clear, Mozambican farmers are abandoned by the state.
The new and always excellent CAP is available on
Report: https://www.ine.gov.mz/web/guest/d/relatorio-cap-2023_2024
Excel tables: https://www.ine.gov.mz/web/guest/d/quadros-finais-cap-2023
The survey is dated 2023-2024 but was actually carried out between December 2024 and May 2025. The previous survey was in 2009/10.
Please Minister Vala, not Pro-Savana again
Salim Vala said that only 6.5 mn hectares of land are cultivated out of Mozambique's 36 mn ha of arable land. The headline is that 82% of Mozambique's farmland is "available". But that wrong interpretation caused two of Mozambique's biggest development disasters, ProSavana in the Nacala corridor and the Global Solidarity Forest Fund.
Much of that 82% of land has occupants and owners in local communities. Most peasant farmers only use a hoe and no fertiliser which means a family can only farm 1 ha, but they usually have two other plots (included in the "unused" land Vala refers to) left fallow to regain fertility, and in a rotating system farmers move from one plot to the next. Other land is held for children to take over when they grow to adults. And community forests are the sources of a wide range of food, herbs, timber, thatch, etc. Comparing the present CAP to CAP 2009/10 shows how quickly this land is being taken up by Mozambique's rapidly growing population. Fifteen years ago only 3.2 mn ha were cultivated, but the new CAP shows that in 15 years, land use actually doubled. Local people are putting this "available" land to use, each year farming 650,000 ha more land.
Technical support including fertilizer and extension services would allow farmers to use more of the land for longer periods. New systems of sustainable agriculture are now available, but they require three years to establish and the farmers need support to feed their families during that transition.
Mozambique has offered all the so-called "vacant" land to investors for decades. But they want large blocks of good land, so they try to capture all of the land peasant farmers have already identified as best. The ProSavana deal with was signed by Mozambican agriculture ministers in 2009 and 2013 offering Brazilian and Japanese companies 700,000 ha of "vacant land". Those companies wanted to create huge plantations, but the occupants of that land, with the support of national civil society and international NGOs, fought fiercely, and the project had to be abandoned in 2020.
In 2006 Norwegian and Swedish Lutheran churches and the Dutch Civil Servants and Education pension fund created the "ethical" Global Solidarity Forest Fund (GSFF) to plant 360,000 ha of trees on "vacant" land. Local people fought back burning and destroying thousands of hectares of newly planted trees. By 2020 more than 300,000 ha had been abandoned, with investors simply walking away from land they had grabbed from poor peasants and pillaged - and the peasants were given no compensation.. There is a final irony. Both the Nordic countries and Portugal do large forestry projects on an outcropping basis - where local farmers are paid to care for the trees and the companies promise to buy when they are ready for harvesting. That would have been ideal from rural Mozambican were local farmers could have small blocks of trees. But like all neo-colonial farm companies, GSFF and Portugal's Portucel refused listen to local people and apply their successful outgrower programme, and instead demanded plantations.
The answer has been clear for two decades - invest in intensifying cultivation by the current land occupants and turn them into family commercial farmers. In both the US and Europe most farms are family commercial farms and there are huge government programmes to support them. But donors and the World Bank say only rich countries can do that; Mozambique must have foreign-owned plantations.
This argument is not new and we detailed it 12 years ago in Chickens and beer: A recipe for agricultural growth in Mozambique (2014) which is free on https://bit.ly/Chickens-Beer
Please please Planning and Development Minister Salim Vala, don't listen to people who tell you 82% of Mozambican farmland is vacant. Don't repeat ProSavana and the Global Solidarity Forest Fund. Instead, help the land's occupants to grow into family commercial farmers as in Mozambique's neighbours Malawi and Zimbabwe.
Chapo announces major changes to bring the state back in - Just nice words or a real challenge?
Speaking in Ribaue, Nampula on 16 May at the launch of the agricultural campaign, President Daniel Chapo announced state intervention that will go against decades of World Bank and IMF demands.
“We want to open a new chapter in the agricultural marketing landscape in Mozambique - a chapter where the producer is no longer the weakest link in the chain but is recognised as the true engine of the national economy,” the President said. Until now the World Bank and IMF have insisted that marketing and farm support must be left to the free market, which left peasant farmers with all the risk leaving them the weakest part of the marketing system and in poverty. Are these just words that sounded good to the President in a speech, or is Chapo really prepared to challenge the World Bank and ingrained power in both the Ministry of Agriculture and Frelimo?
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Chapo stressed that the state must "ensure that produce reaches the market in good time, in good condition, at fair prices, and with a real impact on household incomes." He also instructed the Mozambique Cereals Institute to guarantee to buy - to be the buyer of last resort - to ensure that no producer is left with unsold output due to lack of buyers, while also safeguarding food reserves and fair pricing for farmers." He also said that the Mozambique Commodities Exchange should "set reference prices and enforce fair market rules, with the goal of protecting the producer.”
This is the policy in Zimbabwe which has ensured grain surpluses and rising small farmer income, but the World Bank has always vociferously opposed this and more than a decade ago forced the Mozambique Cereals Institute to stop setting minimum prices and being buyer of last resort.
Bank policy was also that processing was to be left to the private sector, and cashew nuts and other crops should be exported for processing. The President also said the government aims to invest in agro-processing so that agricultural surplus is no longer exported as raw material but instead transformed locally into value-added products. "We want to see maize produced by our people turned into flour produced in Mozambique. We want to see cashew nuts, sesame, peanuts and other crops driving the creation of new factories, generating jobs for families, women and young people, and bringing prosperity to the country.”
Is Chapo brave and powerful enough to push this through?
