Land, productivity and agricultural research: Towards an undestanding of the multiple meanings of...

070415 FARApaper-Anderssonetal.doc 1

Land, productivity, and agricultural research:

Towards an understanding of the multiple meanings of land

Jens A. Andersson*°, Wayne Twine*, Amon Murwira!!

, Ken E. Giller°,

Arnold B. Mashingaidze!, Maja Slingerland°

Abstract

In academic and policy thinking, competing claims on land are often viewed in

terms of conflicting interests over productive resource use. Within this line of

theoretical argumentation tenure security is a prerequisite for increases in

productivity, while a lack of it is assumed to be a major impediment to the

development of African smallholder agriculture as such farming usually takes

place under communal land tenure regimes. This paper challenges this generalized

perspective, arguing that the role of agriculture - including its productivity - in the

livelihoods of rural people should be understood in relation to other sources of

income. Land has different meanings; it is not always the basis of rural livelihoods

or a productive resource in which to invest. Land has multiple uses and is valued

for both productive and non-productive considerations. Building on empirical

material from South Africa and Zimbabwe, it is hypothesized that despite rural

peoples' dependency on natural resources and the omnipresence of farming

activity in communal areas, few depend centrally on farming for their livelihood.

Productivity increases in communal area agriculture are therefore not likely to

result from tenure reform alone.

Rather than focusing narrowly on tenure reform and agricultural productivity,

agricultural research should adopt a wider perspective on land use, and focus on

peoples’ land use practices and the different meanings of land in rural livelihoods.

Thus, better insight is gained in different stakeholders’ - including smallholder

farmers’ - claims on land, which enable more meaningful scientific contributions

to agricultural policy and more productive and/or equitable land-use options.

Keywords: land tenure, land claims rural livelihoods, remittances, Zimbabwe, South

Africa, agricultural research

Paper for the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) meeting in Johannesburg, 2007:

Promoting the productivity & competitiveness of African agriculture in a global

economy. Sub-theme (i): How can agricultural research contribute to pro-poor enabling

land policies?

* School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand; ° Plant

Production Systems group, Wageningen University, !

Department of Crop Science, University of

Zimbabwe; Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Zimbabwe. The authors

wish to thank Judith de Wolf for assistance in data gathering and compilation of this paper.


Introduction

In thinking about agricultural policies in Africa, land is generally viewed as the major

source of rural peoples’ households as some 70 percent of Africa’s population stays in

rural areas in which farming is the main economic activity (FAOSTAT 2000). From this

latter observation it is only a small step to regard rural livelihoods primarily as farm-

based, and subsequently, rural dwellers as smallholder farmers, or peasants. In

development policy discourse, the assessment of this category of rural producers has

changed considerably over the years. Whereas peasants were seen as emerging

commercial farmers in the 1960s and 1970s, they are now often considered marginal in

the world economic order (Bryceson 2000). For instance, the World Bank’s report (2000)

‘Can Africa Claim the 21st century’ declared that African peasant agriculture is not

competitive internationally (van Donge 2005: 126).

The shift away from smallholder agriculture in development policy discourse, follows the

fading-out of post-colonial production revolutions in a number of southern African

countries – Malawi and Zambia in the 1960s and 1970s, and Zimbabwe in the 1980s

(Rukuni & Eicher 1994). The rate of expansion of smallholder production slowed, and

has not been able to keep pace with population growth. Consequently, self-sufficient and

food-exporting countries in the region have turned into maize importers. Understandings

of this slow rate of production growth – or even decline – in smallholder agriculture, have

usually stressed increased pressure on and degradation of natural resources, and a lack of

tenure security in areas characterised by communal tenure regimes. The latter factor is

often seen as a major cause of the low rates of capitalisation – and thus, intensification –

of farm activity in such areas. Without title deeds and tenure security, smallholders can

and will not invest in their land.

This paper challenges this conventional wisdom regarding land tenure insecurity

constraining agricultural development in southern Africa. First, the discourse on land

tenure insecurity tends to reduce the problem of smallholder agricultural development to

a problem over (secure) access to the production factor: land. Thus it localizes the

problem of smallholder agricultural development spatially, in rural areas. In so doing, it

ignores rural livelihoods’ – including smallholder producers – dependence on non-

agricultural sources of income. Hence, we argue for a more comprehensive understanding

of the dynamics of smallholder production systems in communal areas – including their

external connections and dependencies. Urban remittances, labour migration (to mines

and farms), government pensions and grants are important sources of livelihoods and

investment capital for smallholder farmers in southern Africa. Such external connections

and dependencies, which manifest themselves not merely at the level of economic sectors

but also at the household scale, have a profound impact on investment in, and the social

organization of, smallholder agricultural production. A second problem of the

conventional perspective on land tenure security is, paradoxically, that it ignores a major

consequence of southern Africa’s political economy. Different tenure regimes

(private/communal), and rural livelihoods dependence on non-agricultural sources of

income have been a direct result of discriminatory colonial land policies. Their existence

underscore the different values attached to land by different categories of the region’s

rural population. The discourse on land tenure (insecurity) reduces land to its productive

value, disregarding its multiple uses and meanings. Rural dwellers value land for


different reasons, for instance as a place of belonging, or as their ancestral home

(Andersson 2001, 2002b). Such valuations may be at odds with the general held view that

rural peoples primarily depend on the land for their survival, and therefore will embrace

land policies that secures their access to it.

Disentangling land claims can provide insight into the different values and meanings of

land. For instance, while some people merely want colonial injustices to be redressed,

others may value security of tenure per se, wanting to be able to go back to the area

where their ancestors lived.1 Again others may seek financial benefits from land

ownership, or a place to farm. Consequently, land claims need to be understood as value

contestations that cannot be resolved simply by scientific research into optimal land use

as the question is: Optimal for whom? And at the expense of which other stakeholders?

Thus, this paper makes a case for a re-orientation of agricultural research from solution-

oriented approaches towards the understanding and support of stakeholder negotiation

processes.

In the following paragraphs, we first provide general analyses of communal areas in

South Africa and Zimbabwe to highlight some of the diversity and complexities of

smallholder production systems and rural livelihoods in the region. It is shown that

although the contribution of smallholder farming to communal area livelihoods may

differ substantially, even in the least agriculturally oriented communal areas – in South

Africa – many rural dwellers still depend on natural resources. Paradoxically, in more

agriculture-oriented rural areas in which people are highly dependent on farming for their

livelihoods, external connections and dependencies are nevertheless of major importance

for our understanding of smallholder production systems and rural livelihoods in general.

Thereafter, we argue that struggles over land, be they at national or local level, are multi-

dimensional as the stakeholders involved compete and negotiate over the different values

attached to land, not merely its agricultural value. We outline the implications of this

insight for the role of agricultural research in (land) policy processes.

Introduction to country case studies

To highlight some of the regional diversity in areas under communal tenure, we discuss

the role of farming and natural resource dependency in communal areas South Africa and

Zimbabwe. The focus is deliberately not on tenure and land policies, as we try to move

beyond common pro-poor perspectives that tend to reduce current problems of rural

poverty to issues of smallholder farmers’ access to land and security of tenure. Rather

than a narrow focus on land, we adopt a wider - livelihoods – perspective, enabling us not

only to understand the role of farming relative to other sources of rural households’

livelihoods, but also to understand better how farming activity is influenced by and often

dependent other income generating activities.

The country case studies presented below exemplify two rather different situations of

communal agriculture in the southern African region. Although South Africa and

Zimbabwe share a similar legacy of colonial land policies that alienated black people

from their land and concentrated them on marginal soils in low rainfall areas, the role of

agriculture prevailing in the communal areas in these countries differs dramatically.

1 The Makuleke people in northern South Africa reclaiming their ancestral lands in the Kruger National

Park, is but one example of a land claim which is not singularly motivated by the agricultural value of land.


While communal areas in South Africa have largely ceased to be agriculture-oriented,

smallholder agriculture has remained an important source of communal area livelihoods

in Zimbabwe. Although its fortunes have varied over the years, smallholder agriculture

has remained a central focus and source of communal area livelihoods and, arguably,

gained in significance again with the deepening of the country’s economic crisis

curtailing households’ non-farming livelihood options.

South Africa: state dependency, rural dwellers and direct natural resource use

South Africa's history is characterized by the systematic displacement of the indigenous

black population, resulting in a process of 'black pauperization', whereby blacks were

stripped of land and other productive assets (Zimmerman 2000; Aliber 2003). This

process started with colonial expansion (mid 1600s to mid 1800s) and reached its zenith

during the apartheid era (1948-1994). The latter period saw a massive relocation of the

black rural population to ‘reserves’ or ‘homelands’ as 'surplus' black residents on white-

owned farms were forcibly removed and resettled (Seekings 2000). As a result,

population densities in these homelands soared, doubling between 1955 and 1969

(Simpkin 1981).2 Comprising only 13% of South Africa’ land area, the former homelands

are now home to 2.4 million rural households and a population of 12.7 million people

(32% of the total population) (Adams 2001).

Lack of employment opportunities in the homelands, aggravated by severe shortages of

arable and grazing land, lead to widespread rural poverty (Francis 2002; Aliber 2003).

This gave rural residents, especially men, little other choice but to become migrant

labourers. In fact, the economic function of the homelands was to reproduce and

subsidize the cost of labour (Wolpe 1972). The homelands thus essentially became labour

reserves for white-owned industry and agriculture. The high population densities and

drastic shortages of land forced a transition from an agrarian to a cash oriented rural

economy (Delius 1996; Gelderblom & Kok 1994). By the end the 1950s, an independent

black peasantry had been virtually eliminated (Seeking 2000; Bundy 1979). In a study by

Marcus et al. (1996) in which attitudes of rural households to land were surveyed,

approximately 33% of respondents indicated no interest in acquiring more land, while a

similar proportion wanted one hectare or less for subsistence cropping. The youth were

particularly disinterested in farming.

The role of agriculture relative to other dimensions of rural livelihoods

Given the history outlined above, what then is the role and value of agriculture in the

economy of the rural poor in South Africa? This is an important question in the discourse

on the potential contribution of land (tenure) reform to rural development. A livelihoods

approach is useful for a better appreciation of the relative importance of agriculture in

rural livelihoods.

Rural livelihoods in South Africa are complex. Households generate income through a

number of activities, including agriculture (own consumption or sale), natural resource

harvesting, small and micro enterprise, wage labour, social grants, and remittances from

migrant labour (Carter & May 1999; Hall 2004, Shackleton & Shackleton 2004). In the

absence of secure livelihood options (Smit 1998; Francis 2002), people juggle and piece

2 In the homeland of Qwaqwa, the population grew from 24,000 to 300,000 (an increase of 1,250%) in just

ten years (1970 to 1980) (Slater 2002).


together different components of their livelihoods, a process referred to as 'productive

bricolage' (Batterbury 2001).

Despite the dismantling of apartheid, labour migration persists for economic reasons,

such as shortages of employment in rural areas and uncertainty of agricultural livelihoods

(Smit 1998). Consequently, the conventional pattern of out-migration of men resulting in

sex imbalances in the rural population structure is still a salient feature of the former

homeland areas (Figure 1), although it underrates the importance of labour migration as

also large numbers of women relocate to urban areas in search of employment. By way of

example, approximately 60% of males and 20% of females in the economically

productive age group (35-55 years old) from rural households in southern Bushbuckridge,

Mpumalanga Province, are labour migrants (Collinson et al. 2003).

FIGURE 1: NUMBER OF MEN PER 100 WOMEN,

FORMER HOMELANDS OF SOUTH AFRICA, 2001

Ironically, labour migration is a cause of labour shortage and underutilisation of land in

the severely overpopulated rural areas. Only 45% of rural households have adequate

labour endowments for agriculture (Zimmerman 2000). Thus, although some rural

households are constrained by access to land, others have land but do not have the means

to use it productively (Francis 2002).

In contrast to remittances from labour migration, which occur elsewhere in Africa, South

Africa is unique in terms of rural dependence on state transfers. The rural poor receive

and depend on state social grants such as old age pensions. National annual expenditure

on state transfers in 2002-2003 stood at R20 million (9% of the government budget)

(Aliber 2003). Approximately 32.4% of rural households receive state transfers, while

11.5% depend on these grants as their primary income source (Carter & May 1999).

Relative to other income streams for rural households, such as remittances and state

transfers, agriculture (excluding the predominantly white commercial agricultural sector)

makes a very modest contribution to the household economy in South Africa (Table 1).

Small-scale agriculture contributes no more than 32% of total household income, and

63% of households in areas under communal tenure earn nothing at all from agriculture

(Carter & May 1999; Seekings 2000; Leroy et al. 2001; Crookes 2003). This limited

economic significance of agriculture also reflects in rural people’s orientation;

Participatory wealth ranking in Limpopo Province found that livestock and

land/agriculture were rarely mentioned as indicators of either poverty or wealth (0.3%

and 0.1% respectively) (Hargreaves et al. (2007). Carter and May (1999) found that rural

households most involved in agriculture occupy extreme positions on a wealth

continuum. The wealthiest group (1% of households) derived 32% of household income

from agriculturally based activities. At the other extreme, agriculture was the dominant

activity of the poorest households (4.3% of households). Agricultural incomes made up

81% of total household income of these households, yet 80% of them fell below the

poverty line (R237 per month per adult equivalent). Hence, access to agricultural land in

South Africa communal areas primarily functions as a ‘survival tactic’ or ‘safety net’,

rather than as a mainstay of rural livelihoods. Rather than providing a way out of poverty,

it lessens the chance of poor households becoming destitute (Hargreaves et al. 2007;

Shackleton et al. 2001; Aliber 2003).


TABLE 1: INCOME SOURCES FOR RURAL HOUSEHOLDS

In terms of local agriculture’s contribution to food security, the picture is equally bleak.

A study by Leroy et al. (2001) found 80% of rural farming households to be food

insecure. Yet, food security was determined by factors independent of farm

characteristics, such as household size, non-farm income, and total expenditure on food.

This is not a new phenomenon, and Simkins (1981) calculated that agricultural

production in the ‘native reserves’ provided less than half the food requirements of the

resident population as far back as 1918.3

The other value of land in rural livelihoods: Natural resource harvesting

In addition to cropping and livestock, rural households also use communal land for

harvesting natural resources such as fuel wood, wild foods, construction material and

traditional medicine (Shackleton & Shackleton 2000, 2004; Dovie et al. 2002; Twine et

al. 2003) (Table 2). The role of these secondary natural resources on communal

rangelands has been largely overlooked with regard to rural livelihoods in South Africa

(Shackleton et al. 2001). Yet, these resources have an important safety net function in

rural livelihoods as they contribute to daily resource provisioning (‘daily net’), assist in

coping with social, financial or biophysical shocks or changes (‘emergency net’), and

provide opportunities for generating income (Shackleton & Shackleton 2004).

TABLE 2: RELATIVE PREVALENCE OF USE

AND LEVELS OF CONSUMPTION OF KEY NATURAL RESOURCES

A useful way of comparing the contribution of these natural resources to the household

economy in comparison to agriculture is to express consumption as a direct use value.

This is the financial value, at local prices, of natural resources consumed, and crops or

livestock produced (Shackleton & Shackleton 2000; Dovie et al. 2006). It constitutes a

savings for households which harvest or produce these themselves instead of buying

them. It does not include values derived from trade. Using the conservative figure used

by Adams et al. (2000) (in Shackleton et al. (2001)), the direct use value of natural

resource harvesting is roughly equal to that of crop and livestock production in the former

homelands (Table 3). Work by Crookes (2003) and Dovie et al. (2006) even suggests that

net value of natural resource harvesting may make a greater contribution to the

household economy than net value of agricultural production, when averaged across

households, but both of these sources of livelihood pale into the background when

compared with remittances, and social grants.

TABLE 3: DIRECT USE VALUES OF COMPONENTS OF LAND-BASED RURAL LIVELIHOODS

3 HIV/AIDS further exacerbates the gap between rural food requirements and the ability of non-commercial

agriculture to meet these needs as it affects mainly the economically and agriculturally productive age

group (Drimie 2003).


Summing up

The picture that emerges is that agriculture is but one of a range of livelihood pursuits of

the rural population staying in South Africa’s communal areas. Agriculture is constrained

by shortages of physical capital (land, livestock, equipment), human capital (productive-

age adults, knowledge, experience), financial capital (employment, access to credit),

natural capital (due to environmental degradation) and social capital (strong social

networks were disrupted by displacement and resettlement). Rural households’ reliance

on remittances and social grants are additional disincentives for pursuing agriculturally-

based livelihoods. Tenure insecurity in communal areas thus does not seem a major

impediment for agricultural development in these areas. This is not to say that communal

land is valueless to rural inhabitants. Rather, it has multiple meanings. People value land

for agriculture as a livelihood safety net, for residential space, and for the supply of

secondary natural resources. It is perhaps ironic that a product of apartheid policy, the

'homelands', captures most adequately what is arguably the major value of land in these

areas: land constitutes a place of belonging, a home.

Twinned development: Smallholder agriculture & the wage labour sector in Zimbabwe

Unlike in South Africa, smallholder agriculture on communal lands has been flourishing

in Zimbabwe, and is a major constituent of rural livelihoods in many areas. The country’s

smallholder production revolution in the 1980s is often regarded as an example of the

market responsiveness and production capacity of smallholder agriculture. Characterised

by generally poor, sandy soils, low and erratic rainfall, the country’s Communal Areas

were a product of segregationist colonial land policies that sought to protect white settler

agriculture from African competition (Phimister 1977; Palmer 1977; Ranger 1985;

Rukuni & Eicher 1994). Poor rural infrastructure and discriminatory marketing

legislation further restrained agricultural development in these areas during the colonial

era (Keyter 1978). Once the restrictions on communal area agriculture were removed

after independence in 1980, it is generally held, smallholders showed their resilience and

market responsiveness, resulting in a rapid increase in Communal Area maize

production4 in the 1980s (see Figure 4). By the mid 1980s, smallholders had overtaken

the commercial farming sector as Zimbabwe’s largest maize producer,5 although average

yields of 0.5–3 tonnes per hectare (Figure 2) remained low in comparison to the

commercial sector.6

FIGURE 2: THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNAL LANDS IN ZIMBABWE (LEFT)

AND MEAN MAIZE YIELD (TONNES PER HECTARE) IN THESE AREAS, 1981-1993

Inter-season variation in maize yields in the communal areas further suggests that

variations in rainfall are a main determinant of maize output (Figure 3).7

4 Maize production is indicative of general agricultural production in the southern African region as it is

grown on the majority (often >80%) of the farmed area. 5 In the period 1985-2000, average annual maize output of the communal area sector was 1.1 million tonnes

against 0.74 million tonnes in the commercial sector. 6 Average maize yields in the commercial sector in the period 1970-2001: 3.9 mt/ha (std.dev.: 0.9 t/ha).

7 A regression analysis reveals that in the period 1984-1990, more than 80% of the variation in maize yield

(ym) can be explained by variations in mean annual rainfall (rm): ym = 0.002rm - c, R2= 0.833, p < 0.05.


FIGURE 3: AVERAGE RAINFALL AND MAIZE YIELD PER HECTARE

IN ZIMBABWE’S COMMUNAL AREAS, 1984-1991

In hindsight, the generalized understanding of Zimbabwe’s smallholder production

revolution appears more complex. While the commercial farming sector generally

maintained its high productivity levels per unit of land, the smallholder productivity

increases of the 1980s were short-lived. Even discounting major drought years (1987,

1992, 1995) in which yields dropped dramatically, there is tendency in the smallholder

sector for maize yields per hectare to decline since the mid 1980s (Figure 4).

FIGURE 4: AVERAGE MAIZE YIELD (KG/HA),

ZIMBABWE’S COMMUNAL AREAS, 1970-20018

To understand this decline we not only have to recognize the nature of Zimbabwe’s

smallholder production revolution (Rukuni & Eicher 1994), but also the social

organization of smallholder farming systems and their role in rural livelihoods in

Zimbabwe. The smallholder production revolution ‘package’ was a capital intensive one,

consisting of hybrid maize varieties, artificial fertilizer, agricultural extension, state-

funded credit systems, and subsidised producer prices. Although generally characterized

by mixed livestock-crop farming systems, increases in soil productivity in the communal

areas were largely driven by the combined use of mineral fertilizers and hybrid maize,

rather than by higher cattle densities or more efficient manure management.9

The high-input farming regime in the Communal Areas was thus financed by a

combination of agricultural credit, crop/livestock sales, and investments from non-farm

income sources. In the late 1980s, agricultural credit for smallholders dried up and

following Zimbabwe’s adoption of structural adjustment policies in 1990, producer price

support decreased causing smallholder incomes from crop sales to diminish. Combined

with input cost inflation, market production of maize became increasingly unprofitable in

the 1990s.10

Subsequently, demand for, and production of mineral fertilizer decreased

(FAO 2006:25; Mudimu 2003:28). Smallholders’ maize yields per hectare followed in

this decline (Figure 4), as input cost financing became increasingly dependent on non-

farm income sources, such as urban remittances.

Although extremely difficult to quantify, remittances from family members working in

the (urban) wage labour sector have constituted an important role in communal area

livelihoods for a long time. Numerous households have members working in urban

centres, the commercial farming sector and, increasingly, abroad. The traditional pattern

being that of men of working age leaving their homes in search of employment, which is

reflected in population figures as an imbalance in male/female ratio (Figure 5).

8 The post-1980 figures include resettlement areas.

9 In Zimbabwe’s communal areas, average maize yields per hectare correlate positively with size of

livestock herd and consequent manure use (Rukuni in Mavedzenge et al. 2006:16). 10

This is not to say that profitability is the sole determinant of the quantity of fertilizers used by

smallholders as Mudimu (2003:28) argues, but merely that smallholder maize production became more

food-production oriented, and less an entrepreneurial activity.


FIGURE 5: NUMBER OF MEN PER 100 WOMEN: 1992

20-44 AGE GROUP (NATIONAL RATIO: 89 MEN PER 100 WOMEN)

Although the traditional pattern of labour migration becomes less visible in population

statistics as nowadays also increasing numbers of women out-migrate (Mudzidziva 1997,

1998, 2001), the importance of migration and urban linkages persists. Rural-urban

networks constitute an important source of social security, for both urban and rurally

residing household members. The rural ‘home’ in the communal lands constitutes an

important organizing principle in such networks, as contacts from home are often of

crucial importance for a migrant’s entry into the (urban) wage labour sector (Andersson

2001). Hence, land in the communal areas is not merely a productive resource, but also

represents a socio-cultural value – ‘home’ – which also has a utilitarian value in the urban

economy.11

Rural livelihoods in Zimbabwe’s communal areas can therefore not be

reduced to farm-based livelihoods, as much smallholder farming is embedded in and

dependent on rural households links with the wage labour sector. (Andersson 2001,

2002a:112).

The decline in communal area maize productivity may be understood better when not

merely viewed as a rural problem of (tenure insecurity induced) soil degradation, but in

relation to the emerging crisis in Zimbabwe’s wage labour sector.12

Despite Zimbabwe’s

adoption of structural adjustment polices in 1990 – principally aimed at employment

creation – the creation of jobs in the formal sector was negligible. Meanwhile the labour

force continued to grow at a rate of over 6% per annum (Durevall et al. 1999).

With burgeoning unemployment figures13

, many smallholders’ connections to the (urban)

wage labour sector soured. In addition, ‘increases in bus fares as a result of fuel price

hikes since 2001 have made purchases in urban centres expensive’ (FAO 2006:31), while

foreign exchange shortages have made mineral fertilizers increasingly scarce and

expensive.14

With decreasing fertilizer-use the productivity of Zimbabwe’s communal

area soils rapidly declined.15

It seems smallholder farmers initially mitigated this soil

fertility decline by planting larger areas with their main staple food, maize, but since

2000 the area cultivated with maize has decreased and total maize yields plummeted

(Figure 6).

FIGURE 6: COMMUNAL AREA LAND UNDER MAIZE (HA), 1970-200116

,

11

The socio-cultural value of land in southern Africa is also exemplified by the common desire of urban

residents to be buried in the rural home area (see Andersson 2001). 12

At the end of the 1980s 3,000 new jobs were created annually, whereas 300,000 new job-seekers entered

the labour market each year (Durevall et al. 1999). 13

The official unemployment rate in 2004 was pegged at 9.3% (www.zimstat.co.zw), yet foreign sources

already estimated 70% unemployment in 2002 (CIA World Factbook 2005). 14

Since the late 1990s, foreign exchange shortages have affected the importation of raw materials for N-

fertilizers (FAO 2006: 24). 15

Zingore et al (2005) highlight the significance of mineral fertilizers in smallholder farming systems in

Zimbabwe, in which little organic matter is returned to the soil due to removal and feeding of maize stover

to livestock. Under such circumstances, where the soil stocks of organic matter are depleted, mineral

fertilizers, rather the quality of the soil, play an essential role in ‘producing large crops which in turn

replenish and sustain organic matter in the soil’ (2005: 735). 16

The post-1980 figures include resettlement areas. Since the land reform programme of 2000, the

conventional distinction between the commercial and communal sectors no longer holds. The total maize


TOTAL MAIZE PRODUCTION (COMMUNAL+COMMERCIAL), 2001-2005

The use of fertilizer and cattle manure has become concentrated on fields closest to the

homes (see Zingore et al. 2006). For instance, in Murewa the better-off smallholders have

given up planting their out-fields – fields furthest from the homestead – because they

realize that without inputs they will yield nothing on such sandy soils. Poorer

smallholders, without cattle manure or input-support from external sources of income,

have had no such options in soil fertility management. Faced with immediate food

shortage, they have to sell their labour at planting time, at the expense of their own crop

cultivation.

Summing up

In 2002, Zimbabwe faced a 70% food production deficit, the largest in its post-colonial

history. The food shortages were a direct result of crop failure on account of failing rains,

but have recurred on varying scales since as smallholder’s resilience had been

undermined. First, state support for smallholder production diminished in the late 1980s,

gradually altering the productive meaning of land in communal area livelihoods from a

source of income, to a source of subsistence or better, food. Second, as the county’s wage

labour sector descended into crisis, the value of communal land as organizing principle in

rural-urban networks – a device through which rural migrants gained access to the wage

labour sector (Andersson 2001) – altered; formal employment opportunities became few

and far between. Third, as urban remittances and sources of cash dried up, the productive

value of land decreased because of lack of investment in soils fertility. Simultaneously,

the value of land as a means of survival became increasingly important for rural

households in Zimbabwe’s communal areas, albeit this value has proven to be limited.

Meanwhile, as Zimbabwe’s crisis deepened, the political value of land in Zimbabwe has

gained momentum at the national and international level; the government’s land reform

programme has made for recurrent headlines in the international news.

Discussion

The country case studies presented above have drawn attention to the multiple values of

land in rural areas under communal tenure, as well as their dynamics. The adoption of a

livelihoods approach, instead of a narrow focus on agricultural land, has highlighted the

differential role of smallholder agriculture in rural livelihoods, ranging from a very

limited role in South Africa, to a high reliance on the productive value of land in

economic crisis ridden Zimbabwe. To be sure, in both countries rural livelihoods

continue to be dependent on natural resources and agriculture, albeit often as a means of

survival, rather than an income generating strategy. The Zimbabwe case showed that in

such situations in which agriculture plays an (increasingly) important role in rural

livelihood provision, relations with (policy) developments in the wider economy are of

crucial importance for understanding smallholder agriculture’s performance. This

suggests that land tenure security is not the key to securing rural livelihoods as some

studies argue (Roth & Gonese 2003), but merely an element of a more encompassing

agricultural development strategy.

yield figures for the post 2000 period are estimates, but indicate the collapse of maize production in

Zimbabwe that prompted widespread food shortages in the country.


A major question remains, however, which is rural people’s perception of land and their

interest in farming-based livelihoods. For instance, in South Africa’s former homeland

areas, those who are interested in accessing more land for agriculture constitute a small

minority and are often farm workers on white-owned commercial farms who have some

agricultural experience and knowledge (Marcus et al. 1996). Smit (1998) found that only

32% of multi-home households with rural and urban homes preferred the rural home. Of

these households, 43% mentioned agricultural opportunities and 19% better quality of life

(19%) as the main reason for their preference. The majority, however, preferred and

aspired to urban living due to better access to services, facilities and employment. Such

findings have important implications for the targeting of land policies and programmes,

as it raises the question: who wants to be a farmer?17

Multiple meanings of land: The implications for agricultural research

The two country cases discussed above, also have important implications for agricultural

research and its contribution to land policy formulation. Current thinking on land in

Africa is often based on the premise that claims on, and competition over land is solely

informed by productive considerations. For instance, institutional economic perspectives

on land tenure change have viewed increased competition and conflict over land as a

phase in an evolutionary development from communal towards more individualized

forms of land tenure, assuming the latter result in more productive land-use (for a

discussion, see Platteau 1996). This assumption about the productive use of land also

resurfaces in political economy inspired thinking about land conflicts, which views these

primarily as ‘social turmoil over deepening social differentiation, particularly with regard

to land and landed resources’ (Peters 2004: 301). However, detailed studies of local

conflicts over land suggest that not all competition and conflict can be reduced to

struggles over the distribution of a productive resource (Andersson 1999). Lengthy legal

struggles that do not seem to result in lasting solutions but merely in the depletion of

resources of the litigants involved, also suggest that resource struggles not necessarily

have an inherent economic rationality (van Donge 1993, 1999; Sheridan 2000; Andersson

1999). As this article has suggested, land represents a number of economic and socio-

cultural and political values, which makes conflicts over access and use inherently multi-

dimensional.

Where does this leave agricultural research? Recognizing that different stakeholders’

claims on land are informed by rather different valuations of that land, implies that

agricultural research has to abandon its search for optimal land use solutions, for what

may be optimal for one set of land users, is not likely to be optimal for other sets of

stakeholders who attribute different meanings to land and landed resources.18

If

agricultural research is to contribute more meaningfully to land policy and (agricultural)

development, it needs to be re-oriented from solution-oriented approaches towards the

understanding and support of stakeholder negotiation processes. Understanding different

stakeholders’ uses and valuations of land and the way they negotiate their claims on land

is, by definition, a joint social and natural science endeavour. This interdisciplinary

17

Compare Callear (1985) who discussed this question for the Zimbabwean context. 18

Furthermore, in the agricultural sciences, ‘optimal solutions’ have often been equated with maximizing

output per unit of land, returns to capital, or labour.


understanding constitutes the basis for a more modest role for science in land use policy

formulation – the formulation of different options or scenarios that can improve the

quality of stakeholder negotiations.

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FIGURE 1: NUMBER OF MEN PER 100 WOMEN,

FORMER HOMELANDS OF SOUTH AFRICA, 2001

Source: Statistics South Africa (2001)

National: 92


TABLE 1: INCOME SOURCES FOR RURAL HOUSEHOLDS Activity

% of households

engaged in activity

ZAR earned by households

engaged in activity

Remittances 39 267

Secondary wage labour 37 582

Agricultural production 36 91

Social grants 32 396

Primary wage labour 22 1445

Small & micro enterprises 10 392

Source: Project for Statistics on Living Standards & Development (PLSLD),

Carter & May (1999)


TABLE 2: RELATIVE PREVALENCE OF USE

AND LEVELS OF CONSUMPTION OF KEY NATURAL RESOURCES.

Resource

% of households

using

Mean household

consumption (kg/year)

Wild spinaches 95.6 58

Fuelwood 95.5 5,500

Wild fruit 88.2 104

Edible insects 53.5 ?

Source: Shackleton & Shackleton (2004)


TABLE 3: DIRECT USE VALUES OF COMPONENTS OF LAND-BASED RURAL LIVELIHOODS

Component Value per household

per year (ZAR)

Aggregate value per year

(2.4 mill rural households) Percent

Crop production 1,543 3.7 billion 27.9

Livestock production 1,200 2.9 billion 21.7

Natural resource

harvesting 2792 6.7 billion 50.4

TOTAL 5,535 13.3 billion 100

Source: Adams et al. (2000) in Shackleton et al. (2001)


FIGURE 2: THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNAL LANDS IN ZIMBABWE (LEFT)

AND MEAN MAIZE YIELD (TONNES PER HECTARE) IN THESE AREAS, 1981-1993

data source: ZRC/USAID (1998)


FIGURE 3: AVERAGE RAINFALL AND MAIZE YIELD PER HECTARE

IN ZIMBABWE’S COMMUNAL AREAS, 1984-1991

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

1.6

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Year

Rainfall

Maize Yield


FIGURE 4: AVERAGE MAIZE YIELD (KG/HA),

ZIMBABWE’S COMMUNAL AREAS, 1970-200119

Source: GOZ-MLARR (2002)

19

The post-1980 figures include resettlement areas.

1985-2001 trend:

(excl. droughts years)

y=-36.9x+b R2=0.64

1987

1992

1995 1983


FIGURE 5: NUMBER OF MEN PER 100 WOMEN: 1992

20-44 AGE GROUP (NATIONAL RATIO: 89 MEN PER 100 WOMEN)

taken from: Andersson (2001:88)


FIGURE 6: COMMUNAL AREA LAND UNDER MAIZE (HA), 1970-200120

,

TOTAL MAIZE PRODUCTION (COMMUNAL+COMMERCIAL), 2001-2005

Source: GOZ-MLARR (2002)

20

The post-1980 figures include resettlement areas. Since the land reform programme of 2000, the

conventional distinction between the commercial and communal sectors no longer holds. The total maize

yield figures for the post 2000 period are estimates, but indicate the collapse of maize production in

Zimbabwe that prompted widespread food shortages in the country.

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