Abstract:

Zimbabwe's rural and agricultural development reflects the development policy contradictions of the African continent. A major aspect of the country's development program involves the large-scale resettlement of poor and landless farm households under various planning models. Currently, the two most important of these models are the Model A individual-family managed farms and the Model B cooperatively organized farms. This article evaluates aspects of the implementation and performance of these so-called Model A and B schemes. Evidence is presented for a comparative case study of two adjacent and contrasting schemes, namely, Mufurudzi Model A and Simba Youth Model B schemes both established in 1980 in the Mashonaland Central Province. Planning projections for these resettlement schemes indicate optimistic economic returns, especially after three to five years of inception. However, while the Model As are generally doing very well the Model Bs are woefully underperforming. For instance, the greater majority of households in Mufurudzi are producing enough grain for subsistence and achieving positive net cash incomes from maize and cotton sales. They are also accumulating household material items and capital assets. Resettlement is there-fore improving the quality of their lifestyles. On the other hand the experiences of the Simba Youths, like the overwhelming majority of their counterparts elsewhere, are of increasing indebtedness, dependency, apparent hopelessness and failure. This lesson has broad implications for policy choices in African agriculture. While cooperatives in general appear attractive for mobilizing communities for grassroots development the abysmal performance of the producer cooperatives in Zimbabwe and all over Africa make them a liability rather than a strategic asset for growth and positive change.