The EU restored aid earlier this
year but not to farms on 'disputed' land – excluding the majority of small
coffee growers
Ray Mhondera
September 24, 2013
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Zimbabwe has perfect growing conditions for coffee,
once
producing some of the best beans globally. Photograph: Alamy
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HARARE - A misty dawn has not yet given way to
daylight in Zimbabwe's eastern highlands.
Lenard Moyo, a coffee farmer near Chipinge
town, is prising red arabica beans out of their trees and putting them in his
bag – as he does every morning during harvest season.
"It's
hard when it's so cold outside, but we have to pick them early," he said.
Zimbabwe's
coffee belt has the perfect growing conditions for the beans: high mountain
peaks and cool climates, and the country used to be famous for its
"super-high-quality" product, slowly sun-dried, and tasting smooth
and fruity. In the 1990s it produced some of the best coffee in the world,
alongside South America and Kenya, generating crucial foreign currency and a
livelihood for many labourers and small-scale farmers, as well as the big
commercial farms.
But
today the industry is in decline: many of the mills have been abandoned,
farmers are in debt, and Zimbabwe produces just 60 "bags" of coffee
beans a year compared with 250 bags in 1988 – with one bag amounting to 60
tonnes of coffee.
Earlier
this year the European Union announced
€10m (£8.4m) in aid to Zimbabwe's medium and
small-scale farmers, in an attempt to revive the industry. But there's a catch.
"Coffee is an important crop and we'll consider funding requests from
small farmers provided the land involved is not in dispute," Aldo
Dell'Ariccia, head of the EU delegation to Zimbabwe, told the CAJ news agency.
Moyo
said this caveat disqualified the majority of farmers. "Most of our small
coffee plots are on land being contested in court by former white farmers.
We'll simply not qualify," he said.
The
disputes began in 2000, when young militants loyal to the president, Robert
Mugabe, stormed white-owned farms to reclaim the land. At the time, Moyo was
what was known as an "out-grower" – a black farmer owning a small
plot of land next to a large commercial farm, relying on his neighbours for
finance, expertise and machinery.
"First,
[the militants] pruned down our coffee beans and burned hectares of trees in a
week of rage. Coffee drying pens were turned into nurseries for marijuana and
wild vegetables," he said. "The new farm owners wanted instant profit
but a coffee tree once planted takes three to five years to mature."
Production
plummeted as the new land owners could not secure bank loans to buy fertilisers
or repair ageing infrastructure. Many were new to the business, and lacked the
expertise to keep quality high.
In
turn, international buyers began to shun Zimbabwean coffee, and in 2010 the
Mutare Coffee Mill, considered one of the best in Africa, was forced to shut down.
It required at least 4,000 tonnes of coffee to operate profitably but was
receiving just 300.
And
while Zimbabwean coffee growers struggle, elsewhere the industry is booming.
Ten years ago the average cost of a tonne of coffee was $1,400, now it can
fetch up to $4,000 (£2,500), according to the International Coffee
Organisation.
"Zimbabwe
is losing billions of dollars annually as the price of coffee has increased to
about $3 per pound, up from $1 per pound in the 90s," Gifford Trevor,
president of Zimbabwe's Coffee Growers Association, told News24.
Most
of the country's coffee farmers lack cash reserves to support themselves when
the crop fails or yields are low, according to World Vision. The charity is
training farmers and offering much-needed supplies such as fertilisers,
irrigation systems and pesticides. But the farmers are still unable to compete
with better organised growers in countries such as Rwanda, Kenya and Malawi.
The
global coffee industry is also stacked against suppliers, with the bulk of the
profit going to those further up the chain.
In
August, on a sponsored trip to Johannesburg, 39-year-old Moyo tasted his first
cappuccino. "I thought it was bitter lemon," he said. He was
particularly horrified to pay $3 for one cup, compared with the $5.30 he
receives for a bag of raw coffee beans.
Peter
Multz, a former consultant for the Dutch charity SNV, which works with Zimbabwean
farmers to improve their business skills, said most of the profit went to
shippers, roasters and retailers. He said Zimbabwean farmers also faced
particular problems. "Sometimes the coffee is delayed at border crossings
for up to a week, and without proper facilities the beans go bad. Sometimes
buyers have to pay a bribe to let their coffee shipments go through," he
said.
With
a more stable economy and western governments starting to release aid,
Zimbabwean farmers hope that the country's coffee industry will recover. But
for Moyo times are still hard: "I can't even pay my farm workers and
coffee pickers properly," he said. "Sometimes we reward them with
milk, soya meals, and clothes after every harvest. As we say here, cash is a
crunch."
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Ray
Mhondera is editor of The
Africa Scientist Magazine