Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the political economy of contract farming in Zimbabwe, interrogating the concomitant (re)configuration of food systems and agrarian transitions, and provides transformative recommendations.

Paper long abstract:

Contract farming is among the most heralded pathways for transforming land use, crop production, food security and commercialisation. Accordingly, farming on contract, either private-led or state-led, is a topical agricultural financing and development approach. A large corpus of literature pertaining to contract farming in contemporary Zimbabwe, Africa and other parts of the global South is available. Yet there are lacunae in relation to the political economy of farming on contract, and the implications to (re)configuration of agri-food systems and agrarian transitions. This paper uses Zimbabwe as the heuristic case study and political economy as the evaluative lenses to interrogate the multiple, complex, fluid and ongoing interactions and outcomes of contract farming, the nature and configuration of food systems and agrarian transitions. The paper prioritises four questions: a) How are contract farming, food systems and agrarian transitions linked? b) How can the relationships (or non-existence of these) be explored from a political economy standpoint? c) What are the insinuations of farming on contract, the (re)configurations of food systems and agrarian transitions to Zimbabwe’s and broadly, Africa’s futures? d) What alternative agricultural financing and development options can be adopted to sustainably transform Africa’s futures and wellbeing through agriculture? Overall, the paper shows the manifold interactions, impacts and outcomes therefore defies a mono inference. Nevertheless, the paper advances the need to rethink both private-led and state-led contract farming and more importantly its link with food systems and agrarian transitions, and to re-envision the future of Zimbabwe and the African continent through agriculture.

Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that land redistribution from below, access to the commons and socially embedded tenure arrangements, enable the 'surplus population' to engage in subsistence crop production and petty commodity production of livestock. These land uses are being reconfigured the 'peasant' way.

Paper long abstract:

The dominance of corporates in South Africa's agro-food system has progressed at the marginalisation of small-scale food producers. This marginalisation coupled with declining employment on commercial farms, and the slow pace of land redistribution has exacerbated the crisis of social reproduction of many rural working class households. Drawing from empirical evidence collected through household surveys, in depth interviews and life histories in Mhlopheni village of former labour tenants, in Kwa-Zulu Natal province in South Africa, the paper shows that access to land and natural common resources through socially embedded tenure arrangements enable households to produce crops and keep livestock to reproduce themselves. Using unpaid gendered family labour, simple farming tools and low cost farming techniques such as seed saving and fertilising the soil with animal manure, and selling livestock through informal local markets, the people of Mhlopheni are reconfiguring farming the 'peasant' way. This is despite the fixation of the state on seeing land reform primarily as a vehicle for small-scale capitalist farmers to become large-scale commercial farmers, an attempt that continues to fail to address livelihoods challenges of many marginalised working class rural households. Evidence from Mhlopheni invites us to ask different questions about what land reform is for and take seriously the possible answers we arrive at and their implications for agrarian change.

Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that the joint ventures that constitute the backbone of land reform policy in post-apartheid South Africa perpetuate elite capture and policy-makers need to move beyond the pragmatic approach of joint ventures and to rethink alternative inclusive growth models.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents findings from research on elite capture in South Africa’s redistributive land reform. It aims to contribute to the broader debates around inclusive economic growth in land reform and corruption. Inclusive business models (joint ventures) are promoted as viable avenues for the inclusion of the rural poor into profitable value chains. However, Oya (2012), Lahiff (2014) and Hall and Kepe (2017) show that inclusive businesses are exploitative and have excluded the rural poor. The Pro-active Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS), the current South African Land Redistribution policy shifted agricultural farming into individualised economic activity. The policy is a market-led model embracing an ideological rhetoric of commercialisation. It presents emerging black commercial farmers to convey a prescriptive trajectory for commercialisation done in the context of inclusive business. As part of the State’s extensive Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) programme implemented across the economy, farm beneficiaries’ partner with the strategic partner/mentor, as means to empower previously marginalised groups and to transform the dualistic unequal agricultural economy inherited from the apartheid regime. Joint ventures are to provide beneficiaries access to mainstream agricultural markets, move up the agricultural value chains, capacitate beneficiaries through training and skills transferral to deal with and; adapt to the continuously evolving markets and to promote employment creation. While the state funds the land transfer and also provides recapitalisation and post-settlement support to farm beneficiaries. The strategic partnership/mentorship model of land reform opened up opportunities for agribusiness and individuals to cash in on land reform through illicit benefit and in some instances later withdraw. Beneficiaries have not entirely benefited from the model. The paper presents South African cases where commercial partners and individuals remain in joint ventures through fronting, subsidy farming and farm flipping in order to continue to benefit from public funds. This experience presents a case that the renewed interest in inclusive business models in agriculture often excludes poor people and favours agribusiness at the expense of farm beneficiaries. The paper posits that, joint ventures not the appropriate way to approach land reform as they perpetuate elite capture. Policy-makers need to move beyond the pragmatic approach of joint ventures and to rethink alternative inclusive growth models.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the rise of soy in Zambia, examines the role of agribusiness in restructuring local agro-food systems and analyses the impacts of crop booms on seed and food sovereignty. This analysis is based on qualitative research that was conducted in Zambia’s Mumbwa district.

Paper long abstract:

African food systems are collapsing and failing to feed and sustain millions of vulnerable urban and rural dwellers that depend on a combination of own production and increasingly burgeoning food markets to ensure their food security at the hands of converging crises. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa estimates that 55 million Africans went into extreme poverty in 2020 and reversed more than two decades of poverty reduction on the continent. The current food price crisis is highlighting even deeper cracks and vulnerabilities in African food systems resulting from the lock-in effects of the dominant model of food production that relies on high levels of food and energy imports. Increasing levels of corporatisation in African food systems are not only restructuring patterns of access to and use of land, but are also dramatically changing local diets. I explore how the gradual shift towards rotational cropping and monocultures within the context of crop booms, with a focus on how the rise of soy is undermining seed and food sovereignty in Zambia’s countryside. The analysis considers the impacts of these changes on the governance of Zambia food systems. The emergence of soybean as a booming crop and the different roles it adopts in domestic markets has resulted in significant changes in food production and markets, underpinned by the consolidation of corporate power in Zambia’s agro-food sector. This analysis is based on qualitative research that was conducted in Zambia’s Mumbwa district.

Key words: agro-food systems, food sovereignty, seed sovereignty, soy

Paper short abstract:

L’accès à la propriété foncière pour la femme burundaise est confronté à des obstacles non négligeables. Le défaut d'accéder à la terre entraine des conséquences du coté de la femme, de la famille et du pays. Des actions doivent être menées par toutes les parties prenantes pour lever ce défi.

Paper long abstract:

Une inégalité entre l'homme et la femme s'observe au niveau de l'accès à la propriété foncière.

Pour accéder à la propriété foncière, la femme burundaise doit passer par deux voies sures dont la succession et/ou l’achat d’une portion de terre.

Cependant, la succession est jusqu’aujourd’hui régie par la coutume qui est discriminatoire, par le fait qu’il existe une catégorie de femmes qui n’est pas autorisée à participer à la liquidation de la succession, à savoir la femme rurale mariée. Les difficultés financières aussi auxquelles font face la femme burundaise, ne permettent pas d’avoir un nombre élevé de femmes qui parviennent à acheter des fonds de terre.

Les recherches faites montrent que la coutume, la surpopulation, l’ignorance de la femme et le manque de l’estime de soi ainsi que le défaut de concilier la vie familiale et d’autres activités génératrices de revenus, sont des obstacles qui empêchent la femme à pouvoir accéder à la propriété foncière.

Des conséquences qui découlent de ce fait sont énormes mais l’on cite notamment la pauvreté chez la femme, les violences basées sur le genre et le faible développement économique.

Notons aussi que la femme a le devoir de contribuer à son auto développement et au développement de son pays. Pour soutenir alors l’idée que permettre à la femme d’accéder à la propriété foncière, c’est la permettre d’être économiquement indépendante, certaines solutions ont été proposées pour palier à ce défi. Différentes parties prenantes ont été interpellées et la femme doit jouer un rôle très important.

Paper short abstract:

This communication analyses the strategies put in place by young people from rural exodus in the city of N'Djamena. It highlights their integration into working life and the city through the development of market gardening and the production of nurseries in the middle of the urban fabric.

Paper long abstract:

Like many African societies, Chad's countryside is characterized by deteriorating living conditions, forcing a large majority of rural people to flee to urban centers to hope for a better life. If two decades ago, this rural workforce helped absorb the demand for informal domestic services in the different sectors of the city, the current trend is to develop market gardening and the production of nurseries in urban areas. The methodological approach adopted combines field observations, interviews with resource persons and a survey of a random sample of young people working in urban agriculture and nursery production activities.

The results highlight that the difficulties of access to formal and / or informal jobs of rural youth, led these actors to show ingenuity to draw on their resources and adapt to the realities on the ground to develop a promoting agriculture. The latter is a response, not only to the current changes in eating habits, more oriented towards plant raw vegetables and the needs of exotic plants, but is practiced on small spaces whose access is part of an intelligent approach. The ingenuity and resourcefulness shown by rural young people in cities is a response to the employment crisis, healthy eating and environmental balance in a context where public policies have failed in terms of protecting green spaces in cities.

Paper short abstract:

In the context of digitalization in Africa, the question of how global value chain arrangements are reconfigured remains open. This presentation addresses new digital practices of export-oriented smallholders and discusses in how far this leads to a reconfiguration of this agro-food system.

Paper long abstract:

Driven by the rapid adoption of Internet-based technologies amongst producers in the Global South, the question of how and whether global value chain arrangements are reconfigured remains open to debate. This presentation addresses the changing practices of export-oriented smallholders accompanying the transition from simple phone towards smartphone use. Our dynamic approach compares cross-sectional survey data to answer to what extent Kenyan smallholders have adopted the Internet, which digital practices in relation to agricultural value chains they use and how this affects the inter-firm coordination between smallholders and subsequent actors. Smartphones have gained broad importance for smallholders as they are used for digital practices in value chains. Contrary to the debated dark sides of Internet connectivity, we can however not confirm sweeping digital control or value appropriation by lead firms. So far, long-established, analogue practices widely persist in arrangements between smallholders and exporters. Nevertheless, smartphones are used to nurture multilateral knowledge networks of unprecedented reach and size and further allow for incipient experiments with marketing strategies on digital marketing platforms devoted to domestic markets. We argue that these practices resemble strategic niche seeking that has to be interpreted in relation to captive export arrangements. With qualitatively and quantitatively increasing options to access and share knowledge and to market commodities, the Internet can serve to navigate the multiplicity of chain alternatives (domestic production, informal export production). Such niches should be considered as creating leverage against the take it or leave it deal of captive export production.

Paper short abstract:

Rapid urban growth poses increasing challenges, but also opportunities for urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA). This paper explores the nexus between UPA and urban growth through a meta-analysis of 60 research papers on UPA in Africa and detailed empirical insights from Kenya.

Paper long abstract:

Rapid urban growth poses increasing challenges, but also opportunities for urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA). This paper explores the nexus between UPA and urban growth through a meta-analysis of 60 research papers on UPA in Africa and detailed empirical insights from Kenya. Applying a framework focused on interactions between urban growth, agricultural production factors, and urban food markets, the paper highlights the challenges and opportunities of UPA. The findings indicate a complex, multi-dimensional challenge for planners and policymakers seeking to manage UPA in and around African cities. So far, few studies holistically address spatiotemporal dynamics, intra-urban variations, and complex multi-dimensional interlinkages of UPA under urban growth. Especially, little attention has been paid to market-oriented forms of UPA under rapid urban growth. The empirical insights highlight the spatiotemporal dynamics of UPA and market-oriented farmers’ responses to changing socio-spatial circumstances in two rapidly growing Kenyan cities: Nyeri and Nakuru. We show that market-oriented farmers are not inevitably pushed out of the city, but rather that they are – under certain conditions – able to actively respond to the pressures as well as opportunities that emerge during rapid urban growth.

Paper short abstract:

This paper demonstrates how agrinutrition interventions are not merely technical projects but are embedded in the broader politics of the global food system controlled by capitalist interests. We suggest interventions in these three areas: corporate governance, agroecology and movement building.

Paper long abstract:

Research and policy interventions on agrinutrition have increased, but critical gaps and shortcomings exist in understanding this linkage. Building on secondary literature, this paper presents two main critiques of agrinutrition interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. First, it demonstrates that the relationship between agriculture and nutritional outcomes remains fragmented and heavily focused on 'reductionist' approaches to nutrition that promote specific food crops, biofortification and micronutrients- although essential, often removed from local food cultures, food chains and the dietary patterns within which they are consumed. Second, mainstream agrinutrition interventions are silent on how policies translate into outcomes. When they do, such linkages are usually assumed, deterministic and analysed linearly and miss essential processes, interests, and intervening factors that affect nutrition outcomes. The paper shows agrinutrition interventions are often not mere technical projects but embedded in the broader politics of the global food system, controlled by capitalist interests. Adopting a political-economic lens helps provide a better understanding of how and why malnutrition and food insecurity persist on the content despite the huge investments in agrinutrition interventions in SSA by development organisations and international philanthropists. It concludes that bridging the agriculture and nutrition gap necessitates multiple approaches to defining target groups, needs and risks. It requires corporate governance of large food corporations, a move away from academic silos to more collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to diagnosing and addressing malnutrition problems in ways that resonate with the people.

Paper short abstract:

This paper dicusses the complexity of forest conservation and agricultural intensification in Zambia's agro-industrial Mkushi cluster. It uses quantitative data to analyze an incentive-based conservation program with regard to its effects of deforestation and livelihoods among small-scale farmers.

Paper long abstract:

Deforestation is a major environmental issue in rural Africa that has significant consequences for local communities and global ecosystems. In Zambia's agro-industrial Mkushi cluster, deforestation is widely debated as an immediate issue of small- and large-scale farmers' competition over labour, resources and especially land. Today, agricultural intensification is hence seen as main driver of rapid deforestation in Mkushi. Deforestation is most salient in the cluster's uphill forests - or the most important water catchment of the region. Despite its conservation status, farmers seek to expand their production into these forest areas.

In this paper, I use quantitative household data to explore the effects of an incentive-based conservation program with regard to deforestation trends as well as small-scale farmers’ livelihoods. The results suggest that locally adapted conservation farming can promote more sustainable agricultural practices and less deforestation in the region whilst also ensuring a significant improvement of livelihoods among farmers.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is a comparative study of land governance in the legal systems of South Africa and Zambia. It argues that insisting on western legal approaches in the governance of customary land tenure, misguides the development of customary law.

Paper long abstract:

The statutory legal systems in Zambia and South Africa are generally considered superior to customary laws and practices. Despite the co-existence of different legal systems in both countries, it cannot be assumed that they receive equal recognition or status. Over the years, efforts to understand customary land rights in these two countries lean towards the statutory legal system. The assumptions and underlying principles in each system are different and cause problems when the two interact. In particular, these conflicts are significant when applied to customary land governance, especially when it aims to provide for tenure security. Therefore, the dynamics of perspectives in co-existing legal systems require deeper understanding in order to frame approaches that will lead to the realisation of customary land rights. This paper is a comparative study of land governance in the legal systems of South Africa and Zambia. It argues that insisting on western legal approaches in the governance of customary land tenure, misguides the development of customary law. The paper reveals how the legal systems in both countries respond to the demands of colonisation and globalisation. The paper also critically questions the dominant application of western principles and theories in law in the governance of customary land tenure.

Paper short abstract:

The research shows how Rwandan women access to land has contributed to their engagement in food production, enhanced food security, increased household income, basic assets accumulation, and decreased financial reliance to their husbands’ incomes.

Paper long abstract:

From the 1980s many African countries have undertaken the land reforms through institutionalisation of statutory systems of land tenure that promote gender equality in land ownership and use, propel land-based investments, and boost the socioeconomic development. Promoting access to land for women has been acclaimed to reduce household vulnerability to hunger and poverty, and contribute to the achievement of some SDGs. In Rwanda, the land reform was introduced in 2004 in order to grant both men and women equal rights in access, ownership and use of land and reduce poverty. The research applied a livelihood framework to investigate the extent to which Rwandan women whose livelihood depends on land resource have been engaged in its use as a collateral to finance resources required for investment in farming and other income generating activities that contribute to household development. Qualitative data analysis was applied to analyse the data which were collected through questionnaire survey and interviews with men and women who jointly own land. Findings reveal that the use of land for food production and as collateral has enabled women to contribute to the increase in household income, enhanced food security, basic assets accumulation, and decrease of financial reliance to their husbands’ incomes. Yet, the lack of confidence about achieving the expectations from using land as collateral prevents some women from full engagement in household development. Their training on the use of land as collateral for household development is recommended.

Keywords: land reform, gender equality, collateral, household development.

Paper short abstract:

The paper engages with Zimbabwe’s post land reform context to ascertain discernible agricultural commercialisation trajectories. It centrally argues that emergent agricultural commercialisation pathways have implicated on production, accumulation, social reproduction and human welfare.

Paper long abstract:

Land reform and agrarian restructuring which has been undertaken in Zimbabwe in the past two decades has reignited scholarly engagement on the utility of the agrarian sector in tackling underdevelopment, poverty, food insecurity and unemployment. In a context where land reform remains an overlooked vector of social policy and African agrarian futures, this paper critically engages with Zimbabwe’s post land reform context, characterised by the emergence of small to medium scale farmers who have in recent years embarked on agricultural commercialisation pathways. This trajectory is partly attributable to the country’s recent political transition where emphasis is placed on neo-liberal agricultural and macro-economic policy prescripts, crystallised around the idea of agricultural commercialisation as key in enhancing agricultural production, poverty reduction and ultimately structural transformation. Lacunae however exists on the availability of empirical evidence which critically engages with the nexus between land reform (as a social policy instrument) and agricultural commercialisation. The paper utilises the transformative social policy framework to investigate agricultural commercialisation pathways in Zimbabwe’s resettlement areas and how these impact on production activities; social and capital accumulation; social reproduction and welfare. It shows that the country’s agrarian context presents complex and dynamic processes which need to be understood by looking at the relationship between the social dimensions of land reform and agricultural commercialisation. These are presented as key components in reducing poverty; enhancing human capabilities and livelihoods, and setting the agenda for reimagining Africa's agrarian futures and building sustainable agro-food systems.

Paper short abstract:

How the introduction of colonial modernity, the thirty years of war for independence, and the post-independence nation building projects have impacted production and social reproduction in Eritrea?

Paper long abstract:

Historically, in the precolonial Eritrea, agriculture—small scale cultivation and herding—has been the predominant, if not, the sole means of production and subsistence. However, over the past century, Eritrea has been under major socio-political and economic upheavals that have created supplementary and alternative modes of production. Italian colonialism, the thirty years bloody war for independence, and the post-independence nation building project are some of the significant ones. Italian colonization introduced colonial modernity into the lives of the Eritrean people by establishing the colonial modern state and introducing capitalism and wage labour into the economy. The Ethiopian rule over Eritrea is characterized by the unmitigated humanitarian and environmental havoc in Eritrea. The brutality of Ethiopian rule and the protracted Eritrean war of independence led to the death, displacement and emigration of hundreds of thousands of Eritreans. Since then, migration and remittance have become another means of production and social reproduction. During the early years of independence, the country was ruined and damaged by the thirty years bloody war for liberation. The state had to start almost everything from scratch and made some socio-economic reforms. Hence post-independence is characterized by the state’s engagement on nation building, which significantly has impacted production and social reproduction and the political economy at large. My study aims to study how such socio-economic and political developments have impacted agriculture, which is the predominant means of production in Eritrea.

Paper short abstract:

The paper will examine how gender relations alter when land is nationalized and the state owns it exclusively. It demonstrates the inconsistency between state land laws and traditional land tenure patterns, along with their effects on gender-equitable access to and ownership of land.

Paper long abstract:

The focus of this paper is the gendered dimensions of the land question in Eritrea. Control over and ownership of land implies power dynamics on the economic, social, and political levels of society. Historically, women have been suppressed from economic, social, and political power by various customs and patriarchal institutions still present in many societies. However, women’s land access and control raise their status in their communities and can help shape women’s identity as producers, productive and deserving members of their families, and their communities. Therefore, addressing ongoing socio-economic imbalances requires examining how land issues related to women's land ownership and labour exploitation. Several studies have examined the role that gendered land questions play in addressing the persistent socio-economic inequalities. This paper, however, examines how gender relations alter when land is nationalized and the state owns it exclusively. It demonstrates the inconsistency between state land laws and traditional land tenure patterns, along with their effects on gender-equitable access to and ownership of land. The paper explores the Eritrean land policy from this angle and argues why it hasn't led to more women having access to and control over their land. This raises concerns about how gendered land issues in Eritrea are changing the balance of economic and social power within the family and state.