Tobacco Farmers and Their Communities: Interlinkages, Gains and Losses in Mazowe, Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article investigates spillover effects from the interlinked transactions arising from smallholder tobacco farmers’ participation in contract farming arrangements in the Mazowe district of Mashonaland Central. The case study is based on data from a household survey conducted in the district and includes both tobacco farmers and households that do not produce tobacco. Interviews, participant observation and a review of statistical data and grey literature helped trace dynamics of production, intra-household relations and changing communal relations. The study explores how social relations and power imbalances shape the distribution of benefits, costs and losses resulting from the adoption of contract farming in the production of tobacco. The paper argues that the adoption of contract farming leads to a range of interlinked transactional outcomes, such as the diversification of agricultural production and new investments into non-farm activities by the poorer members of the community. In turn, these interlinked transactions generate jobs and increase food consumption and effective demand for services at the community level. However, it is also the case that the gains from these interlinked transactions are highly skewed against the poorer people in the district and that wealthier and better-connected farmers gain more from adopting tobacco than their less wealthy and less well-connected peers. This could lead to increased inequality in the community. The paper shows how agricultural dynamism generates spillover and multiplier effects that benefit communities in an unequal and poorly understood manner.

Keywords:

• contract farming
• community
• spillover
• interlinked transactions
• multiplier effects

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on data from my PhD field work in Zimbabwe, Mazowe. I would like to thank Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza, holder of the National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa, for financial assistance which enabled me to collect data in Zimbabwe and participate in the Centre for African Studies seminar series. I would especially like to thank Professor Horman Chitonge for helpful comments during the study, and Helena Pérez Niño and Martin Prowse for insights and comments on this paper.

Notes

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2 Tied arrangements are transactions linked to past or future economic activity. For instance, a payment with maize delivered against the promise of a labour service in future would be a labour-output transaction: Bardhan, ‘Interlocking Factor Markets and Agrarian Development’.

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9 M. Moyo, ‘Household and Community Effects of Contract Farming’.

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12 Adjognon, Liverpool-Tasie and Reardon, ‘Agricultural Input Credit in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

13 Bellemare and Bloem, ‘Does Contract Farming Improve Welfare?’

14 M. Moyo, ‘Household and Community Effects of Contract Farming’.

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25 Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, Zimbabwe Tobacco Today Magazine (September 2018).

26 M. Moyo, ‘Household and Community Effects of Contract Farming’.

27 NKC African Economics, ‘COMESA/SADC/SACU Tobacco Value Chain’ (Paarl, NKC African Economics, 2012). Retrieved 1 March 2022 from http://www.tobaccosa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/NKC-Tobacco_Value_Chain_Report-October_2012.pdf.

28 A. Vinga, ‘Zimbabwe: Reprieve for Tobacco Farmers as RBZ relaxes forex retention Period to 180 Days’ (19 March 2019). Retrieved 6 May 2019 from https://allafrica.com/stories/201903190275.html.

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30 See Bellemare and Bloem, ‘Does Contract Farming Improve Welfare?’.

31 Bell, ‘Credit Markets and Interlinked Transactions’; Bardhan, ‘Interlocking Factor Markets and Agrarian Development’; S.J. Goetz, ‘Interlinked Markets and the Cash Crop–Food Crop Debate in Land-Abundant Tropical Agriculture’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 41, 2 (1993), pp. 343–61.

32 Ibid.

33 Bell, ‘Credit Markets and Interlinked Transactions’.

34 J.E. Stiglitz, ‘The New Development Economics’, World Development, 14, 2 (1986), pp. 259.

35 Adjognon, Liverpool-Tasie and Reardon, ‘Agricultural Input Credit in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

36 Ibid.

37 Prowse, ‘Becoming a Bwana’; H. Pérez Niño, ‘Class Dynamics in Contract Farming: The Case of Tobacco Production in Mozambique’, Third World Quarterly, 37, 10 (2016), pp. 1787–808.

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41 Scoones, Mavedzenge, Murimbarimba and Sukume, ‘Tobacco, Contract Farming, and Agrarian Change’; P. Zikhali and P. Chilonda, ‘Explaining Productivity Differences Between Beneficiaries of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme and Communal Farmers’, Agrekon, 51, 4 (2012), pp. 144–66.

42 Mazwi, Chambati and Mutodi, ‘Contract Farming Arrangement and Poor Resourced Farmers’.

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46 Interview with taxi conductor, Mazowe, 18 December 2017.

47 Interview with health officer, Mazowe, 27 November 2017.

48 Interview with beneficiary of labour-input/land transactions (such as an agreement to provide labour services in exchange for inputs or a piece of land to farm), Mazowe, 26 November 2017.

49 Interview with a farmer on a labour/output-based lessee arrangement, Mazowe district, 27 August 2017.

50 Interview with contract farmer no. 1, Mazowe district, 28 July 2017.

51 Interview with contract farmer no. 1, Mazowe district, 28 July 2017.

52 Interview with contract farmer–mechanic, Mazowe, 25 November 2017.

53 Interview with contract farmer no. 2, Mazowe, 23 August 2017.

54 Interview with non-contract farmer no. 1, Mazowe, 23 August 2017.

55 A.A. Djurfeldt, ‘Seasonality and Farm/Non-Farm Interactions in Western Kenya’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 50, 1 (2012), pp. 1–23.

56 S.C. Rubert, A Most Promising Weed: A History of Tobacco Farming and Labor in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890–1945 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 1998).

57 Interview with contract farmer no. 3, Mazowe, 29 August 2017.

58 Interview with contract farmer no. 4, Mazowe, 29 August 2017.