The Political Economy of Contract Farming in Zimbabwe

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This book examines the emerging patterns of agricultural finance in Zimbabwe since the advent of the Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) implemented in the year 2000, drawing from the Nairobi debates of the 1980s on contract farming and the peasantry in Africa. With a specific reference to contract farming in tobacco and sugarcane, it explores the scale, extent, power relations and how these impact on land use and the well-being of farmers who benefitted under the land reform. It also offers an insight into how contract farming influences social contradictions in rural Zimbabwe while assessing the emerging institutional finance mechanisms that have emerged as a response to the radical land reforms and the attendant international isolation, political and economic, of the country since 2000. The book also offers lessons on how agrarian finance can be structured to be inclusive for the benefit of small-scale farmers.

List of figures v

List of tables vi

List of abbreviations and acronyms ix Preface x

Introduction xiii

1. Land reform and the agrarian finance crisis in Zimbabwe 1
2. Changing patterns of agricultural finance in Zimbabwe: Social exclusion and innovation by the peasantry 17
3. Global architecture and the incorporation of the peasantry 73
4. Between a rock and a hard place: The peasantry under tobacco contract farming in Zimbabwe 99
5. Differentiation among tobacco growers in Raffingora 127
6. The subsumption of sugar outgrowers by capital in Hippo Valley 159
7. Adverse incorporation and accelerated social differentiation in Hippo Valley 183

Conclusion: Towards an autonomous development path 211

References 220

About the author 239

Index 240

Freedom Mazwi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Rhodes University, South Africa. His research and publications over the last ten years largely focus on the political economy of agrarian transitions in Africa. Mazwi is also a researcher with the Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies based in Harare and an Editorial Assistant at the Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. He has published articles in a number of journals, international newspapers, and books and was recently appointed a Visiting Scholar at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS).