In addition to its core business the CSC was a one third partner in a large industrial tannery and managed 250,000 hectares of ranch land and five feedlots. Investment in a new factory for Bulawayo was well under way as was a complete upgrade of the factory in Masvingo. Once complete these developments gave the CSC a network of five internationally recognised factories all up to full EU standard. Exports to the European Union were running at 11,000 tonnes per annum worth over US$100 million.
Today the CSC is largely defunct, two of the abattoirs are inoperable and the others have not operated for some years. Only two are in any condition to resume operations. The export licenses for the EU have long since lapsed and are unlikely to be regained any time soon because veterinary controls have collapsed. The ranches have all been taken over and the feedlots are empty. The Canning Plant and Tannery in Bulawayo are derelict. The Cattle Finance Scheme, for over 70 years the backbone of the industry, financing 500,000 head of cattle a year, is closed down.
Lack of security
Nationally, in 1997 the cattle herd was about 8 million head – 5 million in communal areas and three million on commercial farms. Today, while communal herds are about the same, the commercial farms are down to about 20 per cent of former holdings. The main problem is the lack of funding and the absence of any security in the land; thousands of kilometres of fencing have disappeared. The once thriving breeding industry has collapsed and the genetics of a century of cattle breeding lost.
How did we get into this mess? The decline in the CSC began a long time before the “fast track land reform programme” in 1990 and finally collapsed completely by 2003. Since then the cattle industry itself has continued to decline and total cattle slaughters today probably reach about 300,000 head, half from communal farmers and half from what remains of the commercial beef industry.
The collapse of the CSC was due to corruption and mismanagement, as well as the growing competition from private abattoirs. As its throughput declined the CSC was unable to maintain exports and compete.
Loss of skills
Once the CSC collapsed the decline in the commercial herd accelerated and this was reinforced by the collapse of commercial agriculture due to the land reform programme.
The consequential collapse of the agricultural industry as a whole was followed by the decimation of the wider economy and this in turn affected all government services with the loss of skills and experienced staff and this gave rise to epidemics of cattle diseases such as Foot and Mouth. Can the industry recover? The answer to that is of course yes, but no recovery is possible without attention being given to a number of fundamentals.
First we have to provide security to those who farm the land. In the commercial farming districts this means, at the very least, the granting of secure, long term leases to all farmers in the commercial farming districts.
A start has been made with the new leases issued to A1 settlers but they do not go far enough. They may be suitable for the cattle industry because we can lend against the security of the cattle themselves but are not adequate for commercial borrowings because they do not restore value to the land and cannot be traded in an open market. Therefore the new farmers have no collateral.
Veterinary services
Secondly we must restore discipline to the industry, cattle movements and cattle theft must be brought under control. In a situation where your most valuable asset – your cattle – can be walked off your property without recourse to the forces of law and order, no one is going to invest in cattle.
Similarly if we cannot control common livestock diseases then there is no future for the industry, the efficacy of veterinary services has to be restored. Thirdly, we simply have to get the CSC back on its feet. Without the CSC we cannot establish the cattle finance scheme as the success of that scheme was predicated on the CSC financing the scheme and controlling the slaughter of any cattle carrying the CSC brand. In addition, with Zimbabwe experiencing a large annual variation in rainfall, the CSC has to act as a shock absorber in times of drought. The men and women who created the commission in the 30’s knew what they were doing and we need to go back to basics on this. The private sector cannot fill that role.
Fourthly we need to get all the ancillary operations of the CSC working again – the canning plant, the tannery, the ranches and the feedlots as well as, perhaps most critically the cattle finance scheme. The latter, because all the new farmers lack the capital to invest in a long term industry like the cattle industry. For this purpose, unlike cropping, leasehold land title rights would be very adequate if they were sufficiently long term and secure.
How to resurrect the CSC is another matter – in my own view, based on 30 years of experience with CSC operations, is that we could revive the CSC in a few weeks if we did the right things and that the revival could be self-financing.
Post published in: Analysis