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Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform
The Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe has emerged as a highly contested reform process both nationally and internationally. The image of it has all too often been that of the widespread displacement and subsequent replacement of various people, agricultural-related production systems, facets and processes. The reality, however, is altogether more complex. Providing new and much-needed empirical research, this in-depth book examines how processes such as land acquisition, allocation, transitional production outcomes, social life, gender and tenure, have influenced and been influenced by the forces driving the programme. It also explores the ways in which the land reform programme has created a new agrarian structure based on small- to medium-scale farmers. In attempting to resolve the problematic issues the reforms have raised, the author argues that it is this new agrarian formation which provides the greatest scope for improving Zimbabwe�s agriculture and development. Based on a broader geographical scope than any previous study carried out on the subject, this is a landmark work on a subject of considerable controversy.
eBook
Gender and Land Reform
Goebel examines the social forces and effects of the resettlement process, including state policy and legislation, customary norms and practices, local institutions, and ideologies and cosmologies. Her study emphasizes the strategic choices women make in new institutional and household contexts and considers the interests of poor women who have been marginalized within the land reform process.
eBook
Forced displacement: critical lessons in the protracted aftermath of a flood disaster
Forced displacement and resettlement is a pervasive challenge being contemplated across the social sciences. Scholarly literature, however, often fails to engage complexities of power in understanding socio-environmental interactions in resettlement processes. Addressing Zimbabwe’s Tokwe-Mukosi flood disaster resettlement, we explore hegemonic uses of state power during the pre- and post-flood induced resettlement processes. We examine how state power exercised through local government, financial, and security institutions impacts community vulnerabilities during forced resettlement processes, while furthering capitalist agendas, drawing insights from analysing narratives between 2010 and 2021. Concerns abound that multiple ministries, the police, and the army undermined displaced people’s resilience, including through inadequate compensation, with state institutions neglecting displaced communities during encampment by inadequately meeting physical security, health, educational, and livestock production needs. We explore how forcibly resettling encamped households to a disputed location is not only an ongoing perceived injustice regionally but also a continuing reference point in resettlement discussions countrywide, reflecting concerns that land use and economic reconfigurations in resettlement can undermine subsistence livelihoods while privileging certain values and interests over others. Policy lessons highlight the need for reviewing disaster management legislation, developing compensation guidelines and reviewing encampment practices. Analytically, lessons point to how state power may be studied in relation to perspectives on the destruction of flood survivors’ connections to place, people and livelihoods, underscoring the critical need for theorising the relationships between power dynamics and diverse experiences around displacement.
Journal Article
Zimbabwe's Emerging Farmer Classification model: a 'new' countryside
The article presents an Emerging Farmer Classification model and its typologies, revealing the dominance of medium-scale farmers, consisting of smallholder and medium-sized farms, in Hwedza district. The article argues that the Emerging Farmer Classification reflects ongoing reconfiguration in Hwedza district and is a result of the changing workings of capital after the Fast Track Land Reform era. The analysis is based on a case study involving 230 household interviews across five settlement models, and 20 in-depth interviews. The article identifies capital as a key driver shaping agrarian relations, following land redistribution in Zimbabwe.
Journal Article
Zimbabwe's land reform: new political dynamics in the countryside
The reconfiguration of land and economic opportunity following Zimbabwe's land reform from 2000 has resulted in a new politics of the countryside. This emerges from the processes of accumulation and differentiation set in train by the land reform. Yet these politics are contested: between the interests of new 'middle farmers' who are 'accumulating from below' and politically connected elites and large-scale capital who see different opportunities for land-based accumulation. These dynamics are being played out in different ways in different parts of the country, depending on the agroecological potential of the area, the way the land reform unfolded and local political actors and processes. Based on research over the past 14 years, this paper examines two areas in Masvingo province and develops a contrasting analysis of emerging political dynamics. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the longer-term politics of agrarian change in Zimbabwe.
Journal Article
Land concentration and accumulation after redistributive reform in post-settler Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's recent fast-track land reform was redistributive, but it retained significant enclaves of large-scale agro-industrial estates owned by transnational, domestic and state capital, despite unfulfilled popular and domestic elite demands for land. Such estates were encouraged by the state to produce agro-fuel (ethanol from sugar), sugar, tea, coffee, timber and citrus, with wildlife ranching for domestic and export markets, alongside expanded small food producers. This outcome reflects the unresolved contradictions of seeking autonomous development in the context of sanctions, domestic political polarisation and declining agricultural production, while promoting reintegration into broader world markets. Neoliberal policies replaced dirigisme by 2008 to promote stabilisation and agricultural recovery but with limited impact. Foreign agricultural investment in Zimbabwe is nonetheless atypical of the current neoliberal land grabbing in Africa, since Zimbabwe reversed past inequalities and retains some state autonomy, and residual land concentration remains contested.
Journal Article
Exploring the link between climate change perceptions and adaptation strategies among smallholder farmers in Chimanimani district of Zimbabwe
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to establish the association between smallholder farmer perceptions toward climate change and adaptation strategies at the household level in Chimanimani District of Zimbabwe.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 284 households mainly using a structured questionnaire. The Heckman probit selection model was used to first identify the underlying socio-economic factors that affect households’ recognition of climate change in the past 10 years, and the second model the factors that influence adaptation to the climate change phenomenon.
Findings
The majority of farmers (85 percent) perceived that climate change, characterized by rising temperatures and variability in rainfall patterns, has been occurring in the past ten years. As a response, farmers adapted using methods such as manuring and staggering of planting dates. Indigenous knowledge systems and non-governmental organizations increased the likelihood farmers’ recognition of climate change (p<0.05). The probability of adopting multiple adaptation strategies was influenced by household head’s education level, land tenure and access to public extension services.
Practical implications
Integrative extension methods that take into account socio-cultural values could be helpful in building resilience as farmers are better able to understand the climate change construct. There is a need to guarantee land tenure rights in resettlement areas to stimulate investment on farms.
Originality/value
This study showed that there is a link between farmers’ prior knowledge of climate change and the number of adaptive investments. The analysis proposed an educational and extension approach that is embedded in the socio-cultural and traditional setting of farmers.
Journal Article
Family farms and the markets: examining the level of market-oriented production 15 years after the Zimbabwe Fast Track Land Reform programme
Small family farmers aim to secure food through own production, and the surplus is only sold to finance productive and reproductive investments. The Fast Track Land Reform programme (FTLRP) caused a dramatic increase in the number of family farms, with approximately 180,000 families being resettled on 70% of agricultural land previously held by about 4500 commercial white farmers. This increased demand for agricultural capital goods, thus putting pressure on the under-resourced government of Zimbabwe, which had to provide inputs considering the FTLRP and capital outflows induced by the economic meltdown. The study tracks and maps out the position of family farmers in Zimbabwe with respect to the agricultural inputs and outputs markets over 15 years of land reform implementation. Specifically, the study utilises the SMAIAS 2013-14 Household Survey to calculate commercialisation indices for major agricultural crops in Zimbabwe. Commercialisation involves the creation of mechanisms that encourage farmers' active participation and integration in the commodity markets. The survey results show that participation is found to be highly differentiated, with small-scale producers participating the least. More farmers were more active in the inputs markets than they were in the outputs markets, thus implying a perennial reduction of farmers' incomes and productive asset investment capacity. Additionally, the study provides structural transformative policy alternatives for improving production and rural household income to reduce poverty.
Journal Article
Biofuels, land grabbing and food security in Africa
The issue of biofuels has already been much debated, but the focus to date has largely been on Latin America and deforestation - this highly original work breaks fresh ground in looking at the African perspective. Most African governments see biofuels as having the potential to increase agricultural productivity and export incomes and thus strengthen their national economies, improving energy balances and rural employment. At the same time climate change may be addressed through reduction of green house gas emissions. There are, however, a number of uncertainties mounting that challenge this scenario. Using cutting-edge empirical case studies, this knowledge gap is addressed in a variety of chapters examining the effects of large-scale biofuel production on African agriculture. In particular, 'land grabbing' and food security issues are scrutinised, both of which have become vital topics in regard to the environmental and developmental governance of African countries. A revealing book for anyone wishing to understand the startling impact of biofuels and land grabbing on Africa.
eBook