Fraters Libertas

Farming It Out Part II

Yesterday, I posted an e-mail from Peter on the factors required to support successful farming in a country. Here's his follow up on Zimbabwe and farming:

The fundamental problem of Zimbabwe was not land, rather the conflict of very different cultures; those of the capitalist self reliant British and those of several major tribal groups in Zimbabwe. The later placed land in communal ownership then and now, so the value of the best lands was quickly exhausted. The lands held by the British was fee simple and all improvements to the land were improvements to the wealth of the individual owner. Also, the culture of the British greatly encouraged invention and change, the cultures of the two main tribes did not.

The results were:

1. The British settlers learned how to make very poor land productive and over forty years resulted in highly productive and profitable farms.

2. The British settler colonial government reduced or eliminated most of the communicable diseases of Rhodesia resulting in the black African population expanding from about 300,000 in 1890 (when whites arrived) to about 12,000,000 in 2000 before Mugabe began his land seizure program, resulting in several million black Africans leaving and perhaps one or two million dying (the result of shortages of food, medicine, and accelerated deaths of those with AIDS).

3. A hundred+ years ago, about 1/3rd of the land of Rhodesia was allocated to the 300,000 Africans of that time. This was (with a few exceptions) the land that they lived on and was far in excess of their needs at that time. The 300,000 became 12,000,000 over 90 years and they greatly over farmed their land, in large part due to the communal nature of ownership.

4. About 1/3rd of the land was retained by the Crown (government) as game reserves and otherwise unsuitable for human settlement, then and now.

5. About 1/3rd of the land was open for fee simple ownership, and this included the many black farmers, a few hundred of which operated farms of significant size (similar to white commercial farms). In fact, in the land seizure program of Mugabe, the land of two to three hundred black (repeat black African) commercial farmers was seized, because these farmers were viewed to be supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (the opposition party) and their lands were sought by Mugabe supporters.

6. After the seizure of the 2,000+ white and several hundred black commercial farms, almost all of these farms ceased to be productive, in large part because the nature of the soil and rainfall where they were located required highly advanced agricultural methods, not a stick and a hoe of the black African tribal farmers.

7. The net result of the land seizure program are:

7a. Mugabe's senior supporters have received many of the commercial farms, most of which they use as weekend country house and do not actively farm.

7b. Zimbabwe has experienced a massive reduction in total production of food, now it is a massive importer of food, rather than being a massive exporter of food prior to 2001. Starvation is common in Zimbabwe and approximately 2,000,000 black African Zimbabwe have moved out of the country.

7c. If viewed as an economics test case, this provided that Marxist economics does not work, and that fee simple ownership of property is required for long term success. Mugabe destroyed the golden goose that had provided the revenue for his country, reducing it to a beggar nation.

7d. The actual economic system of Zimbabwe of today is best understood as feudal, with Mugabe's under bosses getting the use of the seized lands, but NOT the ownership of them. This causes the under bosses to exploit the lands while doing little or nothing to improve them.

7e. And for those elite intellectual always caring types who were so quick to say that the whites took all of the best farm land, this test case has proven that the lands seized from the white (and 200 black) commercial farmers quickly returned to their unfarmable state once high tech farming ended.

As for the future of Zimbabwe, I have no hope for anything improving for many years to come. Yes, there may be periods that some will say that things got better, but in reality they only would get less bad. The white citizens of Zimbabwe were the economic engine of that country and with their (and those black Zimbabweans who shared such values/education/views) being driven out all that remains are the Marxists and the tribal peoples. When Mugabe dies I expect that there will be either a succession of evil dictators each trying to loot the country (much like Zaire/Congo) or civil war between several of the under bosses (best viewed as feudal barons).

Sadly, I see the same thing happening in Namibia, but at a slower rate. That country has a small number of very large white owned commercial farms that along with the white owned (or run) mines, accounts for almost all revenues of that country. Similar efforts at seizure of white owned lands in South Africa are being toyed with (I am not referring to the legitimate land ownership disputes concerning specific lands seized from black Africans in the 1920s who held title or treaty rights to specific lands).

I believe that the Marxist views of so many of the black leadership class of Namibia and South Africa will cause these two countries to seize the property of most of their white citizens, resulting in the departure of the whites and Asians (about 3,000,000 remaining in the two countries). If/when this happens, the same economic destruction will result in these countries as happened when the 500,000 white and mixed race Portuguese residents of Angola and Mozambique were expelled. If/when this happens, the always caring elite intellectuals of the USA and the West will say that it is all for the best.