Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension

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Browsing Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension by Author "Mapfumo, Alexander"

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    Livelihood strategies and food security for resettled smallholder tobacco and non-tobacco farmers: the case of Manicaland Province in Zimbabwe
    (University of Fort Hare, 2015) Mapfumo, Alexander
    At the end of minority rule in 1980, Zimbabwe adopted the land reform programme to redistribute land to address the imbalances in land access while reducing population pressure in the communal areas, bring underutilised and idle land into full production use and improve the base for productive agriculture in the smallholder farming sector as a means to achieve economic development in the country (Musemwa, 2011). The broad objective of this study was to compare the livelihood strategies and food security situations of resettled smallholder tobacco and non-tobacco farmers and the factors that influence livelihood strategies and food security status for the smallholder farmers in the study areas. The study was conducted in Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe and the respondents were stratified into four groups. These were smallholder farmers resettled under A1 and A2 resettlement models as well as tobacco and non-tobacco smallholder farmers. The two models differ on how they were implemented and supported which might render them to have different livelihood strategies and food security status. A total of 300 respondents were surveyed, consisting of 120 tobacco and 180 non-tobacco farming households in Manicaland province. Demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the sampled households in Manicaland province were analysed using descriptive statistics. These statistics include gender of the household head, marital status, age of the household head, level of education, household size, farming activities, sources of income, livestock and asset ownership. Response variables that had an effect on the dependence of either tobacco or non-tobacco farming with all the other response variables were tested using the Chi-square test. The average age of the majority of smallholder farmers for both tobacco and non- tobacco farmers was generally high as it was in the range of 45-55 years. The majority of the sampled households in the resettled areas, A1 (86%) and A2 (88%) were male-headed. The results of this study also revealed that male headed households were 90.8 percent for tobacco and 84.4 percent for non-tobacco farmers. For the tobacco and non-tobacco resettled farmers, all the respondents had at least attained primary education which reveal that all farmers are functionally literate. The results also established that A2 farmers have exceptionally greater land holdings on average (9.067 hectares) than A1 smallholder farmers (average 3.060 hectares). A2 smallholder farmers have been found to produce more output of tobacco on average (6.584 tonnes) and maize (average 3.489 tonnes) whilst A1 smallholder farmers only managed an average of 2.657 tonnes of tobacco and 1.455 tonnes of maize on average. Smallholder farmers obtained income from selling their tobacco output as well as some of their excess food production. Apart from tobacco and non-tobacco output, sampled households in Manicaland province also obtained their income from hawking, selling liquor, salaries and wages, remittances and from pensions. In both A1 and A2 resettlement models, income from tobacco farming made substantial contributions, 43.6 percent and 55.7 percent respectively, to household income. Using the main sources of income by smallholder farmers in Manicaland province (tobacco farming household, non-tobacco farming household, household active in off- farm activities and wage-earner household), the study was able to establish the pattern of livelihood strategies in the area of study. Results indicate that the majority of the households were involved in tobacco and non-tobacco farming in both resettlement models (i.e. A1 and A2) as well as in all the sampled provinces (i.e. Makoni, Mutasa and Mutare rural) with a small percentage of households obtaining their main source of income from off-farm activities and formal employment. The study used a Multinomial Logit model to investigate factors affecting household livelihood generation. In the model, the dependent variables included four livelihood strategies while the explanatory variables included various household social-economic and institutional factors. The results obtained from the multinomial logistic regression model established that six variables (gender, household size, education, land size, access to inputs and access to credit) were found to be significant in determining the adoption of tobacco farming strategy in the study area up to less than 10% probability level. Smallholder farmers who did not adopt tobacco farming indicated that limited land size, shortage of labour as well as access to tobacco inputs were the major impediments to adoption of tobacco farming. Different livelihood strategies which were undertaken by smallholder farmers had a bearing on the food security status of the households. Results of the HDDS revealed that on average 82 percent of tobacco smallholder farmers were measured to be food secure whilst only 42 percent of non-tobacco farmers were food secure using the HDDS. Similar trends were observed from the descriptive statistics which showed that tobacco smallholder farmers consumed relatively greater percentage of nutritious food groups than non-tobacco smallholder farmers. This study revealed that households who diversified their livelihood strategies with the inclusion of tobacco farming were more food secure than those with non-tobacco farming. Results of the Binary logit regression model indicated that the significant factors which explain food security status for smallholder sampled households are farming activity, farm size, number of livestock, remittances, income and access to credit. Appropriate policies should be employed for resettled smallholder farmers to make positive exits from food insecurity through utilising more land effectively and indulging in high returns farming activities such as tobacco farming. The government and private partners such as Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) should therefore, channel more financial resources towards beneficiaries of land reform programme for them to be able to access inputs, credit facilities as well as better level of education.