A recurrent myth about Zimbabwe’s land reform is that it has resulted in agricultural collapse, precipitating widespread and recurrent food insecurity. There is little doubt that the agricultural sector has been transformed, as discussed above, but our data show that there has been surprising resilience in production. Take maize production on the resettlement farms in Masvingo. We tracked production on all farms over seven seasons from 2002-03. The data showed a steady increase in output over time as farms became established, and draught power and other inputs were sourced. The trend was not smooth however, and the major droughts in this period saw low yields. Availability of seeds and fertiliser was also highly variable across years, with various government schemes delivering patchily and unreliably. And patterns of differentiation across households were also very evident. In the better rainfall years of 2005-06 and 2008-09 the proportion of households producing more than a tonne of maize – sufficient to feed an average family for a year - was significant across all sites. For example, following the 2009 harvest between 63% and 100% of households outside the lowveld sites in Mwenezi produced more than a tonne of maize. If sorghum and millet were added to the tally, more than 60% of households even in the Mwenezi sites produced more than a tonne of grain. Such surpluses may be sold or stored, providing a buffer for future years. Around a third of households sell crops regularly. 12 For example in 2009 two-thirds of such households in the A1 self-contained settlement sites sold over a tonne of maize, although marketed output was not so high on the A2 farms, by contrast. While across the sites there are of course some who produce little and had to rely on local markets or support from relatives, this is not a picture of production failure, widespread food insecurity and lack of market integration. Markets are key to the resettlement farming enterprises. But these are new markets, radically reconfigured by the restructuring of the agrarian economy following land reform and deeply affected by the economic crisis that plagued the country for much of the past decade.

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