Land and Agrarian Reform in Former Settler Colonial ... - codesria

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Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond White-Settler Capitalism
Table 7.5: Activity and number of groups involved
Benefit
No. of
HH
Source: AIAS Baseline Survey (2007)
A1 A2 Total
% of
HH
No. of
HH
% of
HH
No. of
HH
% of
HH
Social support 21 16.2 4 10.5 25 14.9
Extension 67 51.5 17 44.7 84 50.0
Marketing support 5 3.8 6 15.8 11 6.5
Input procurement 29 22.3 10 26.3 39 23.2
Labour provision 1 0.8 0 0.0 1 0.6
Profit sharing 7 5.4 1 2.6 8 4.8
Total 130 100 38 100 168 100
These groups serve a variety of purposes and at times duplicate the activities
carried out within the unstructured networks discussed above. The most
common activities carried out by the groups include mobilisation of resources
such as savings, extension support, labour and asset pooling for production,
input procurement and marketing of farm products (see Table 7.5).
The groups were formed as part of a bundle of strategies to improve the
means by which inputs are obtained from government agencies. Some of
the actors involved in these formations had prior experience of formalised
associational activity and, in some cases, external agents such as lending
institutions induced communities to establish one. Some of these groups
were established in an opportunistic manner: for example, the availability
of productive infrastructure such as irrigation equipment on the former
large-scale farm has provided a justification for the establishment of groups. 35
Local farmers’ group leaders and extension officers based on the resettled
farms explained that some of these groups started off as informal networks
of mutual cooperation, but eventually formalised themselves for a variety of
reasons, which include an increase in membership, the need for increased
accountability and transparency in the handling of resources, or to meet the
lending conditions of financial institutions.
The local farmers’ groups tended to be location- specific and most of them
were not linked to the larger groups at district, provincial and national level.
As of the end of 2009, there was no clear mechanism linking these fragmented
organisations to the national unions, either to the ZFU or the CFU, or even
to the new Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union (ZCFU).
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