The high potential areas of Mvurwi in Mazowe district should be the focus for significant commercial agricultural success on the A2 farms as envisaged in the government’s land reform strategy. There is reliable rainfall, good soils, excellent connections to markets, an available, skilled workforce and an impressive inherited infrastructure of small dams, roads and farm buildings. However, once again A2 farms have struggled over the last 25 years, although again with much variation and some important innovations in land use and investment.
Investing in farming
Across our sites there has been significant investment in as well as rehabilitation of existing infrastructure. The Mvurwi area has around 1000 small dams built during the colonial era to support white agriculture, and these are crucial for irrigated production. Many are being used as irrigation expands, but challenges of siltation and environmental degradation through chrome mining has become an issue of late. With the new farms being subdivisions of often large estates, there has been a need to drill boreholes and extend pipework to standing water, and there has been a significant expansion of horticultural production across A2 farms.
This article is from Zimbabweland, a blog written by IDS Research Fellow Ian Scoones. Zimbabweland focuses on issues related to rural livelihoods and land reform in Zimbabwe.