Zimbabwe should not fail in farming

From my basic understanding of economics as well as my experiences in living in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. I would say that the average Zimbabwean and Zimbabwe as a country has a competitive advantage when it comes to farming. Moving around in urban areas of Zimbabwe during the rain season, when you find any vacant land chances are someone is growing maize on that piece of land. I was joking yesterday morning with a South African friend that here in SA whenever one sees vacant land they quickly build a shack. A few years ago I visited a South African friend who stayed in a house with a big garden. I could not help but notice that he was not growing vegetables in his garden. I have realised that whenever I come back from my visits from Zimbabwe, my wife always ask me about the condition of the garden at our house in Zimbabwe. We are not typical farmers however it must be due to the environments that we were raised in where our extended families relied on agriculture one way or the other.

When I was growing up we would go to the village (kumusha/ekhaya) during school holidays and I saw first hand that farming was challenging. I was sold this idea that farming was for less educated people. My mother as a daughter of a farmer and also a farmer in her own right had a garden where she would grow vegetables both at Amaveni Police Station were we stayed from from end of 1982 to beginning of 1989 and then at Mbizo Police Station from 1989 to 1990 she had a very big garden where informal traders from Mbizo township would come day after day to buy vegetables from her. In fact I got my first selling experience when after school, I and my sister Rose would carry a dish full of vegetables for sale at the shopping centre nearer to my school Ruvimbo Primary School. In the police camps they did not allow for maize to be grown due to security reasons, so she would grow maize on the vacant council land outside Amaveni Police Station next to the old Gokwe/Zhombe road. Growing crops on council land is against council bye laws and in some years council workers would mow down the maize crop but she and others would grow the crop again the following year. After my father passed on, my mother bought her house in Dombotombo township in Marondera and she continued growing vegetables on all the spaces around her house and she also had space on council land where she would grow maize, pumpkins, groundnuts, roundnuts etc. during the rain season.

Zimbabweans generally value education. My mother would work alone in her garden as she wanted me to concentrate on my books. My mother wanted me to be a teacher and at least she lived to see me become a teacher when I worked as a temporary teacher between 1996 to 1997. Anyway as the eldest child my job would be to water the garden and help here and there to make the compost (as pictured above together with my Friend Ishmael Kunaka we were digging to make a compost in 1993 at my mother’s house).

In 2004 when I was working still working for Zimnat Lion Insurance as an Underwriting manager, Russell Lister an Insurance broker approached me about a Tobacco Hail Insurance Scheme. We then sat down to finalise the scheme with Mr Tarupiwa Tarupiwa from Zimre Reinsurance Company who had the backing of his boss Mr Mufaro Chauruka. It was only then I learnt about the unique climate advantage that Zimbabwe had when it came to Tobacco farming. We visited several farms assessing the tobacco crop after a hail storm. The following year I grew my first tobacco crop.

Amongst my biggest regrets is that when I was growing up, I was surrounded by many farmers such as my martenal grand father and my mother and I never tapped into their expertise. My mother is gone with all her knowledge and I am grateful for the little farming knowledge I grudgingly learnt from her even though I never saw myself as a farmer. I would have to go back home at some point and the reality is with the Zimbabwean economy being what it is, I would have to concentrate on farming. I am having to learn very fast what I should have learnt decades ago.