The Economist: White Zimbabweans return to farming

A quarter of a century after Robert Mugabe's land grabs, white farmers are returning to Zimbabwe's fields. Not as owners, but as partners of the black farmers handed seized land. Chinese tobacco credit is driving the shift, and this year's crop is a record. Yet the old damage lingers. Compensation is unpaid. Title remains murky. Some farmers are courting Washington, as Afrikaners did. For South Africans watching their own land debate, it is an uneasy lesson..From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com© 2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved..The Economist.The earthy smell of drying tobacco wafts through Mvurwi, a town 100km north of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. It is boom time: this year’s harvest, in its spectrum of autumnal colours, is piled high in warehouses. Last month official data confirmed that Zimbabwe as a whole produced the largest tobacco crop in its history. “When I came here I had nothing in my hands,” says Lovemore Chiwa, a smallholder farmer. “I had to beg to borrow a hoe.” Today he employs five women who help sort his leaves.Such news might be surprising for outsiders who associate Zimbabwe with seized land and fallow fields. It is around 25 years since Robert Mugabe, the liberation-hero-turned-dictator, dispatched thugs to grab mostly white-owned farms, a decision that immiserated his country and made him a pariah. The disastrous legacy of what was euphemistically known as “fast-track” land reform still holds the country back. But the bumper tobacco crop reflects how, a quarter of a century on, some farmers have adapted. These include not only tobacco-growing smallholders such as Mr Chiwa but also a new generation of white farmers, who have—remarkably—entered into joint ventures with the black recipients of stolen farms. Today their number, at least 400, is about the same as or higher than that of the white farmers who have clung on since 2000.Back then there were 4,750 white-owned commercial farms accounting for the vast majority of the country’s most productive land. Mugabe seized and redistributed most of these to two groups. Around 145,000 “A1” households were given plots of 5-6 hectares. Almost 20,000 “A2” beneficiaries were given larger plots on which they would, in theory, farm commercially.Overall the data suggest that the country has yet to recover. Before 2000 Zimbabwe grew enough maize and soya to meet its needs. It often exported its surplus. Today it depends on imports. In the 2010s average annual maize production was half of that in the 1990s..That is because most A2 holdings were given to ruling-party cronies, “war veterans” and civil servants. Many are city-based “cell-phone farmers” without farming nous. Credit is hard to get because banks do not accept grabbed land as collateral.The new joint ventures are a response to this lack of skills and capital. There are 8,000 active arrangements that typically involve the A2 holder lending “their” land in exchange for a share of its net income. Most lessees are black farmers too young to get land in the 2000s. But there are around 400 white farmers involved in joint ventures with the new owners. Roughly the same number of white farmers still operate today after farming throughout the “reform” period (usually because they agreed to downsize rather than lose everything).The new generation is mostly Zimbabwean “farming progeny”, says one farmer. They are in their 30s or 40s. “They are committed to Zimbabwe and don’t want to be anywhere else.” Farming on the land of their fathers’ generation—and occasionally their actual father’s land—has led to tensions in the tight-knit white world. But most newbies ask—and get— permission from the former owners. “It is better that someone use my farm than it goes to rack and ruin,” says one ex-farmer.Tobacco is the most commonly grown crop under joint ventures. It is the only commodity for which there is ready credit. Large tobacco firms such as China’s Tian Ze supply inputs or loans in exchange for delivery at harvest time. “Right now I love the Chinese,” says one farmer in Mvurwi.The tobacco boom has also helped many smallholders, such as Mr Chiwa, who started farming when he was given an A1 plot outside Mvurwi. He has invested the profits from tobacco in property and a $200 Chinese irrigation pump to grow citrus and other fruit. The pump has done more for smallholders than any state scheme..Yet the qualified success of tobacco also highlights the failures elsewhere. State-backed efforts to increase smallholders’ maize production have been undermined by vast graft. An oligarch close to Emmerson Mnangagwa, who replaced Mugabe as president in 2017, has diverted money meant for subsidised seed and other inputs to buying mines, according to an investigation by the Sentry, an American NGO, published in 2022 (the oligarch and his firm deny wrongdoing).Ultimately Zimbabwe cannot move on as long as land is in legal purgatory. Earlier this year the government announced a new drive to hand out title deeds, including to A1 and A2 holders. Yet even if this happens, banks will still be reluctant to accept the deeds if their original owners are uncompensated. The initiative also still leaves hundreds of thousands toiling on “communal” land.In 2020 Mr Mnangagwa signed a deal with the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which represents large-scale farmers, to pay $3.5bn in compensation to the mostly white farmers. But despite redress being a condition of Zimbabwe’s coming in from the diplomatic cold, his government has not paid up. Officials within the ruling party, Zanu-PF, say that the president hoped that donors would help him foot the bill.A minority of white farmers—typically poor and in their dotage—has since accepted a more miserly offer. A few dozen farmers from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland have struck a separate deal. But most are holding out. Some have hired American lobbyists to bend the ear of Donald Trump. They want to capture the attention of MAGA as South Africa’s Afrikaners have done (some of these farmers are also Afrikaners). There is little sign of that so far, however, and Mr Mnangagwa is unlikely to care much about American criticism, given his party’s close relations with China..Read more:.Worst El Niño ever recorded may be coming — and Southern Africa in the crosshairs.In the meantime the gap between Zimbabwe’s potential and its reality widens. The record of the joint ventures illustrates the sub-optimal state of farming. Partners avoid making longer-term investments in crops that might take several years to grow, limiting their exposure to a mini-boom in avocados and blueberries. About half of the arrangements end before the contractual period, sometimes in mutual acrimony. The talk of Harare is that, having seen the challenges of agriculture up close, many young farmers are deciding to get into mining instead..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

The Economist: White Zimbabweans return to farming

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