Felix Kaiza
While touring his home region, Tanzania’s Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda went through two experiences worth putting on record. He received a three-hundred-shilling boost from a teenage boy to help him secure nomination papers for a parliamentary seat in the forthcoming general elections. That is politics. That is their game.
Then he found himself saying Tanzania has reached a stage of saying “enough is enough” to the handhoe. This is more than politics. The implications of these words are more than what the current Tanzania socio-economic and political muscle can hold. But, if agriculture is to occupy its right seat in the running of the country’s economic growth, what the Prime Minister had to say is exactly what should happen. I think he could not have put the condition better. For, as long as Tanzanians continue banking on the hand hoe, the orchestrated “Kilimo Kwanza” would indeed end up as one of those incorrigible political ‘hit rhythms’ in which the actors and actresses become spectators. God forbid!
For a change, Tanzania, this time at least, must take agriculture seriously. The industry is not a stage for self-entertainment. Nor is it an area where those in political posts should hoodwink smallholders for years. It is an area of serious concern for national development.
Looking back through the history tunnel, there is every evidence that our agriculture can develop. During the colonial times, Tanganyika (Mainland Tanzania today) was the granary of East Africa. If history ever repeats itself, why not with agriculture?
What exists in the files of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations slaps Tanzania and its people in the face. Given the right push, the Ruvu Basin can feed the other East African countries. Kilombero can comfortably feed the whole of Central Africa. While Kyela can cover West Africa, Rufiji would suffice for North Africa, including the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Wami and Arusha Chini are enough for the entire South African zone. And this is only in respect of rice. At the same time, Tanzania would still be left with enough stock for its strategic grain reserve.
But all this can only occur if we committedly say “bye” to the hand-hoe and rain-dependent farming. We have to put in place animal-drawn farming systems. We have the animals (cattle and donkeys). No need for imports. We have adequate ‘fuel’ (grass). The tools can be manufactured locally.
Then we can go into meaningful irrigation. Irrigation and the hand-hoe do not match. However, available information on the ground is that Tanzania boasts a total of one million hectares of land that can be put under irrigation. At the same time, the country should actually take it with a pinch of salt that less than one per cent of this highly potential arable land is currently being irrigated. This happens alongside the National Irrigation Development Plan.
Like the walls of Biblical Jerusalem, Tanzania’s agriculture has a tale to shed tears on. The respective policy is magnificent. But the horde of “development programmes” just does not deliver. As a result, the country’s failure to hit the 2010 target of halving absolute poverty as stated in the just-ended Phase One National Strategy for Growth and Poverty Reduction (MKUKUTA I) can greatly be blamed on failed agro-development programmes.
Why? The agriculture that Tanzania undertakes is for food and cash. Since the mid 1980s, the average annual growth for food crops has been 3.5.% as against 5.4% of cash crops. For “MKUKUTA One” to make it, the sector had to grow at a rate of between six and seven per cent annually. This did not materialize. Since agriculture is the mainstay of the national economy, where else could have miracles come from?
Despite external factors that hurt the agriculture industry’s performance, some factors are within our control. Tanzania has farming systems that suit every ecological area. In fact, on a light note in terms of numbers, the country has a farming system for every one of the ‘God’s Ten Commandments’.
The systems are:
. Banana/Coffee/Horticulture system practiced in Kagera, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Kigoma, and Mbeya.
. Maize/Legume system operating in Rukwa, Ruvuma, Arusha, Kagera, Shinyanga, Iringa, Mbeya, Kigoma, Tabora, Tanga, Mara, Kahama, and Biharamulo.
. Cashew/Coconut/Cassava system along the coast and eastern Lindi and Mtwara.
. Rice and sugarcane.
. Sorghum/bulrush millet and livestock.
. Tea/Maize/Pyrethrum.
. Cotton/ Maize.
. Horticulture-based.
. Wet-rice and irrigation system operating in the river valleys and alluvial plains of the Kilombero, Wami, Kilosa, Lower Kilombero, Ulanga, Kyela, Usangu, and Rufiji.
. Pastoralist and agro-pastoralist.
A closer look at the systems should make one wonder why Tanzania still fails to make it in the midst of all these agro-economic variations enjoying ecological advantages of almost every climatic condition on our planet. This could emanate from the failure to get a delivering mix of smallholder and big scale farming.
Within the echoes of the PM’s plea to abandon the hand-hoe era, it was announced that Saudi Arabia was coming to invest in Tanzania’s agriculture. Very fine. The people of ‘the desert’, so to say, are coming to teach people of the wetlands how to make use of their resources!
This should be a big lesson to Tanzania. Nevertheless, we should take advantage of this. Let us allocate these investors new areas of development, where they will not have to displace the local people. Tanzania has no land scarcity. In so doing, we shall have cleared the way for infrastructure development. The coming investors have advanced road construction capability, so we should incorporate their projects in our development targets. Let us use them to transform, rather than distort the rural setting. These investors can share their best agricultural practices with our people. In this way, our people can easily part with the hand-hoe.
Our grassroots leaders must be trained in what goes into modernizing agriculture in order to advise top leaders well. For example, if by chance the local leaders do not know the usefulness of crop rotation, they are more likely to mistake fallow land for hoarding and send a wrong reports to national leaders that the investors are hoarding land when the farmers are short of it.
This will be a recipe for trouble. The political leaders will react negatively against investors. The investors will be discouraged and maybe pull out. And back to square one we would go to our ancestors’ ‘most reliable tool’-the hand-hoe.
Business Times