By Johnson Siamachira
Harare, (New Ziana) – Small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe drive the agricultural economy, which in turn propels the development of the country, as more than half of its 17 million people depend on some form of farming for their livelihood.
One of these 8.5 million people is Florence Chinyanga, a smallholder banana farmer in Honde Valley, Mutasa district in Manicaland province, who for years struggled to provide for her family through banana production.
Chinyanga is not alone. Between 1990 and 2000, the horticulture sector in Zimbabwe was the second largest agricultural foreign exchange earner after tobacco, but after a decade of downward trends, many small-scale farmers were barely eking out a living. Recent years of sustained economic growth and a rise in demand for high-value food have once again made horticultural production a potentially lucrative venture.
One of smallholders’ major impediments to commercial farming is a lack of access to reliable and lucrative markets. Local rural markets are small, and trading in distant urban markets is not profitable because of high transportation costs.
Despite these challenges, smallholders – with effective training and technical assistance – can earn significant income from high-value horticultural crops, as evidenced by the Zimbabwe Agricultural Income and Employment Development (Zim-AIED) programme’s experience in Honde Valley. This USAID-funded programme, which ended in 2015, commercialized small-scale growers through an integrated approach that raised efficiencies in banana production systems; provided access to credit; linked producers to buyers; and trained the farmers to adopt good agricultural and business practices.
More than 4,000 people in Honde Valley depend on bananas for more than a third of their income, amounting to roughly US$200 per household per year, according to a recent study by the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation. The study concluded it was possible to raise these farmers’ incomes by up to 400 percent by increasing productivity and quality. Honde Valley is Zimbabwe’s largest banana-producing region.
Zim-AIED began working in Honde Valley in 2011 in partnership with FAVCO, a national horticulture marketing and distribution company. Recognising the favourable climatic and soil conditions, FAVCO wanted to source bananas directly from Honde Valley farmers, but they needed a guarantee of better quality and higher yields.
Before the Zim-AIED programme began, only 3 percent of the farmers were accessing formal markets, which were paying US$0.22 per kilogramme.
In 2011, with little competition and low-quality products, small-scale consolidators were paying on average US$0.10 per kilogramme of bananas, leaving many farmers ready to abandon their banana plots. With FAVCO’s emergence on the market in early 2012, increased competition for high-quality bananas drove prices up to US$0.25 per kilogramme. As the season progressed, prices rose as high as US$0.40 per kilogramme as small-scale buyers had to compete to buy up the limited supply. This increased demand renewed farmer interest, helping ensure buy-in of Zim-AIED programmes.
Zim-AIED helped FAVCO switch to a cash payment system to ensure they pay farmers on delivery and build a long-term relationship between buyer and seller. This strategy helped FAVCO regain its market share and benefited farmers with stable prices of US$0.32 per kilogramme.
Between 2012 and 2013, FAVCO identified 600 farmers to produce bananas under contract for the company. Once the farmers signed the contracts, they received loans in the form of high-quality tissue-cultured seedlings for clean, disease-free planting material and fertilisesr for improved soil fertility. Tissue-cultured bananas have a high response rate to improved growing conditions associated with good agricultural practices.
In addition to contracting the 600 farmers, Zim-AIED organised 10 demonstration plots throughout Honde Valley to provide hands-on training to another 2,300 farmers, as well as buyers, input suppliers, and extension service providers to build local capacity and sustainability. This effort also reached an additional 2,000 farmers through complementary learning methods between neighbours and families, bringing the total number of banana beneficiaries to an estimated 5,000.
Honde Valley banana farmers have increased their average yield from 4 to 12 tonnes per hectare on their older plantations, and are achieving yields of 40 tonnes from tissue-cultured plantings; some farmers have seen yields as high as 70 tonnes. On average, the 600 contracted farmers have 0.17 hectares of tissue-cultured bananas and 0.4 hectares under traditional varieties. Most have doubled their original area of tissue-cultured plants by propagating suckers, expanding the original 50 hectares to 100 hectares.
Chinyanga used to harvest 4 tonnes of bananas from 0.6 hectares (a yield of just 6.67 tonnes per hectare), earning her a net income of approximately US$250 per year. These days, she cultivates 0.2 hectares of tissue-cultured bananas under contract with FAVCO, from which she is yielding 42 tonnes per hectare. She has another 0.6 hectares of older bananas that yield 19 tonnes per hectare, thanks to improved farming practices.
In the 2023/2024 farming season, Chinyanga sold 9,619 kilogrammes of bananas worth US$2,885, netting her more than US$1,700. She expects to sell a total of 18 tonnes worth US$5,500 this year for a net income of roughly US$3,300. With part of the income, Chinyanga was able to send her son to university.
“My son did very well at high school and finished in 2021, but at that time I failed to mobilise enough resources to send him to university, now I can,” she said.
The Honde Valley contracted banana farmers are now earning US$3,500 in gross income per year from bananas, a 1,750 percent increase over their previous gross annual income, thanks to the improved productivity and quality; a figure more than quadruple the SNV-Netherlands study’s estimate. Average net income for Honde Valley farmers is US$2,450.
As Jane Mukupe, a widowed smallholder farmer, remarked, “We have seen that good agricultural training is essential, but so is training in business skills and marketing. Smallholders need to know about costing and pricing, break-even analysis, production planning, recordkeeping, and contracts.”
With her additional banana income, Mukupe bought a residential stand at a local business centre where she built a new home and expanded production by investing in additional inputs.
James Satombo recently returned to banana farming after working as a supervisor at a commercial tea estate in Chipinge district for more than 30 years.
Using good agricultural practices, Satombo has more than doubled production on his old plantation, earning him an average of US$700 per month; his previous monthly salary was US$150. With part of the income, he has built a modest new home, purchased a gas refrigerator, and constructed a storeroom for his agricultural inputs.
Zimbabwe’s horticultural sector is recovering and aims for US$1 billion in exports by 2030, says the Horticultural Development Council(HDC). The country’s horticultural exports peaked at US$140 million in 1999 before economic challenges set in.
“We have to grow 10 times to reach our goal and it calls for rapid expansion in the sector,’’ HDC Vice President Linda Nielsen says. The targeted growth would require US$1.2 billion of investment, according to the HDC.
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