Al-Ahram Weekly | International | Breadbasket to basket case

		13 - 19 June 2002 Issue No.590 International	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Breadbasket to basket case
The introduction of Western farming methods in southern Africa during colonial times ruined local farming systems. And now the chickens have really come home to roost, writes Sam Page

Zimbabwe's rural population, affected by, or infected with, HIV/AIDS, faces mass starvation within a few months unless the international community acts quickly to procure and distribute food aid. Already we are seeing the first signs of serious food shortages amongst rural people who have been made destitute as a consequence of this epidemic. In the short-term this has been due to the drought that occurred in January, followed by the unusually heavy rains that reduced the yields of those crops that had survived. However, there is a much more serious underlying problem, which is causing widespread and potentially much longer-term, household food insecurity in the rural areas.
Ten years ago I wrote a paper, which documented the decline in household food security in Zimbabwe as a result of the "westernisation" of the local farming system, as instigated by a certain Mr Emory Alvord. Alvord was employed by the British colonial government between 1926 and 1959 to set up what is now Agritex. As an American Mormon Missionary, Alvord introduced the "gospel of the plough", which forever changed the nature of the local farming system.
Once the plough was introduced, agriculture came under the control of men. Women, who had been skilled food producers, were relegated to being mere labourers on their husbands' land. It also meant that trees had to be removed from all the arable land, leading to rampant soil erosion and the new task of "weeding" was invented, which inevitably became women's work. Alvord also introduced maize as the main food staple together with the policy of monocropping, that is the exclusion of nutritious intercrops, such as cowpea and pumpkin from between the rows of cereal. This caused calcium and iron-rich, indigenous small grain crops to be marginalised, while the production of non-seed bearing, tuber crops, such as sweet potato and cassava was also discouraged. As a result most families in Zimbabwe were forced to subsist on a monotonous and nutritionally poor diet of maize- meal porridge (sadza) and rape.
This so-called modernisation of agriculture was taken a stage further when maize was "commoditised" during the 80s. Previously, smallholders had grown open-pollinated, flinty maize, such as "Hickory King", which could be produced with liberal amounts of manure and stored in local granaries without the need for pesticides. The introduction of hybrid maize changed all that. Hybrid maize seed must be purchased each year, as the seed cannot be saved. It also requires inputs of fertiliser and pesticides. When it is monocropped, it needs regular weeding, especially in the first few weeks of growth. The harvest cannot be stored without copious use of pesticides -- as those disturbing TV commercials confirm.
No matter that most farmers could not afford the necessary inputs: an input credit system was introduced, which meant that the farmers had to sell most of their harvest in order to cover the cost of the inputs. Thus maize was turned from a food crop into a cash crop. Massive maize grain sales to the Grain Market Board (GMB), most of which were "distress" sales, during the 1980s meant that Zimbabwe was able to export this commodity and was hailed by western donors as the "bread basket of Africa".
However, this input-dependant farming system has only benefited the agrochemical industry, as witnessed by their massive profits and the generous bonuses paid to their staff. For most communal farmers, especially women, it has meant years of hard labour, food insecurity, periodic debt and continuous exposure to toxic pesticides. The cry has been for higher yields at any cost, instead of for increased food security. Meanwhile Zimbabwe remains the only country in the world where the sale of open-pollinated maize varieties is banned.
Last week, during the course of my work, in an area of Matebeleland, where there are currently more than 100 widows amongst a community of 250 families, I met two elderly widows who are looking after seven orphaned grandchildren between them. They told me that they had no food at all. They had been given maize seed but had not been able to plant it because, in addition to having no money for inputs, they do not have draft-power and are too weak to hoe and weed maize.
This desperate situation is typical for thousands of women in this country, who have not only been widowed because of AIDS, but are also being expected to look after the orphans that have been left behind, as well as care for the sick and the dying.
It is impossible for these women to till one or more hectares of land by hand in order to produce sufficient maize to feed ever- increasing numbers of hungry mouths. What they, and all resource-poor farmers, need is zero-external-input, low-labour farming.
That is, the use of minimum tillage and mulching, within fields protected from livestock by electrified-fences and the production of food crops such as sweet potato, cassava and a range of fruits, which will meet both calorific and nutritional needs. They should also have the right to grow open-pollinated varieties of maize, in mixed cropping systems, where weeds are suppressed through intercropping with spreading cowpea and pumpkin, producing seed that can be selected and saved and grain which can be stored using traditional, non-toxic methods. Without these possibilities, malnutrition will give way to starvation and Zimbabwe will be on a fast track to disaster.
The writer is a specialist in farmer- participatory development and in mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS amongst smallholders.