Paul Nyakazeya, Group Digital Editor 
RECENTLY, I drove past the Kadoma Cotton Research Institute and adjacent is the equally historic Cotton Training Centre. I found myself having vivid recollections of how the cotton-textile (CT) value chain provided the glory days for Kadoma, Chegutu and even Chitungwiza!
Zimbabwe’s cotton boom back then made it the fourth-largest producer of seed cotton in Africa after Egypt, Sudan and the Ivory Coast. I then recalled a 2014 ZEPARU study on the CT value chain revealing the extent of the destruction of the CT sub-sector and its ancillary industries and how this all unravelled following the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) of the early 1990s.
That study outlined the direct consequences of deindustrialisation and unfettered competition in CT goods from outside — on employment, the country’s GDP, balance of trade, fiscal and foreign currency revenues as well as the general livelihoods in the rural community, small towns and growth points.
The nostalgia for me is significant because my parents were cotton growers and, as with many other Zimbabweans, cotton definitely contributed to their ability to afford me an education! So after reviving my interest on the CT value chain, I have come to the initial conclusion that, yes, there are commendable efforts to revive the primary production, but the downstream manufacturing industries need a massive kick and urgently. This industry can be revived and ought to be revived.
I do acknowledge revival attempts over the last decade and note that it is not easy, especially given the now entrenched cheap imports of used clothing. Then there is what in my opinion is the temporary and rather economically unhealthy reliance on ginners to contract finance the crop and reap all the benefits exporting raw lint.
What is needed is the same kind of boldness that is going into reviving primary production. To revive the downstream industries, however, requires our own version of an Asian-Tiger approach, with top notch public servants who understand how to build massive industries, working closely with local industrialists and bankers. We target best of both worlds — grow massive local industry, and be major exporters at the same time.
I foresee the solution in two parts to start with. First is to revive what can be salvaged of the old industry, increase capacity utilisation, increase yarn production and thus, revive the clothing industry. Second is to create a new industry that is more decentralised and distributed. This is in the form of micro-ginneries in the growth points and rural business centres and push for a massive cottage industry also in cotton growing areas.
This falls neatly into the new rural industrialisation agenda — creating a new rural middle class of spinners, weavers, and handmade garment makers for targeted global niche markets. There are millions of those high income consumers globally, who are tired of synthetics and cotton substitutes. They are waiting for us to deliver genuine handmade cotton products. This thrust ought to also start incubating production of organic cotton, which in the end is the real white gold that Zimbabwe should aim to be largest producer in the world.
Cotton production still occupies a special niche in Zimbabwe’s agriculture, industry and society at large. Cotton is still a major cash crop and a source of rural employment generation. Moreover, smallholders growing cotton have improved their housing, mechanised some of their farming operations, and have invested in local business centres. The crop has also promoted infrastructural development in rural areas by the various players in the cotton industries, such as agro-chemical, fertiliser and cotton marketing companies. According to AMA, cotton is a strategic crop directly and indirectly employing over 500 000 people, including farmers, farm workers and their families and industrial workers.
Cotton production, for example, was 274 000 hectares in the 1990/91 season and this grew to 330 450 hectares in 1998/99. Area reached a peak of about 433 000 hectares in 2012 then dropped to all time low of 75 000 hectares in 2016, before slowly rising to 387 000 hectares in 2021. The recent increase in area under production has also been facilitated by the Presidential Cotton Input Scheme.
The declines in area under production over the last decade can be ascribed to input costs, withdrawal of contractors, as well as induced farmer withdrawal due to lower producer prices. Drought also affected production in some years. Highest production of cotton lint was in 2012 with 350 703MT. Since then, production sharply declined to 29 000 MT in 2016, before rising to 351 000 MT in 2022. This also means that yields have dropped from an average 810 kg/ha in 2012 to 550 kg/ha in 2021.
Let me take my usual historical perspective and provide a narrative that I learnt from a fellow professor, one Irvine Mariga. Indigenous cotton was grown in some areas of the country during early colonial rule of the British South African Company. The first research trial was conducted in 1903 with seed from Egypt, Brazil and the United States; but it was destroyed by frost. The second trial in 1904, which was conducted with American, Peruvian and Egyptian seed, suffered from drought and cutworm attack.
A tobacco and cotton specialist was appointed in 1918 and a year later trials covering an area of over 1 000 acres were conducted on 91 farms in 12 districts. The results of these initial trials indicated that the greatest potential area to grow cotton was below 1 200m above sea level.
I re-tell these kinds of stories where appropriate to remind us how far we have come, and therefore, it does not make sense to give up such heritage without a big fight.
Commercial production of cotton then began in 1923 and increased for a few years until it declined because of bollworm attacks. Effective pest-control methods were developed and cotton extension services helped increase the area under cotton production from 4 800 hectares in 1964 to around 80 000 hectares in 1979.
The massive and rapid increase in cotton production by the small family farmers in the communal farming sector since 1980 is the real high point for this sector. What it took then was once again the same old prime-movers for farmer support. Once these farmers started having access to credit, better extension services, improved Cotton Marketing Board services and general upgrading of the infrastructure in rural Zimbabwe — it happened.
In a space of a few years between 1980 and 1985, these farmers not only made history by outstripping large scale farmers in cotton production, more importantly this proved then and continues to be true today that these are not “subsistence” farmers — an excuse used by colonials to exclude them for decades till independence.
They may farm small, but will aggregate into a much bigger industry than one driven by a few large producers. I have more to say about this wonderful industry and will continue next week.
Prof Rukuni (BEAT Africa Academy) writes in his personal capacity.
