This blog continues our short series on small-scale agricultural mechanisation in Zimbabwe. This week we turn to how mechanisation is changing the capacity to process agricultural produce and so add value locally. Selling to larger scale manufacturers, millers and so on is less and less attractive. Transport costs are high, prices for farmers are often low and payment systems are unreliable. The costs of products in supermarkets are also rising daily, making it much better, many argue, to process locally. This applies to grains of all types as well as commodities such as groundnuts. Mechanical processing also reduces the hard labour of using a pestle and mortar for grinding or manually threshing crops, which is why some processing machinery – such as dehullers- is very popular with women.
In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in small-scale machines for threshing, grinding, shelling, dehulling, expressing oil and making peanut butter. These may be machines made by larger manufacturers or more bespoke or adapted machines that are manufactured in local workshops and garages across our study areas. This manufacturing activity is generating jobs and providing important services. As people told us, we now don’t have to go to Harare or Bulawayo to get spares or seek out someone to do a repair as mechanics, welders and others are available locally.
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.