Agriculture and the Policy Environment — Political Dreams and Policy Nightmares: Zambia and Zimbabwe

State intervention for food price stabilisation in Africa: Can it work?

“…A good example of this occurred in Zimbabwe in 1985-86, when 2 million tons of maize were bought into storage. The cost of this storage forced the Grain Marketing Board to reduce the price it offered to maize producers, marking the beginning of the end of the state-led smallholder green revolution in Zimbabwe (Jansen and Rukovo, 1992;Eicher, 1995). This approach, therefore, seeks to set limits to the fiscal costs of price support by restricting it -through the issue of options contracts -to a predetermined number of producers and volume of produce.…”

Chocs Externes, Gestion de l'Etat et Mortalite des Enfants en Zambie de 1964 a 1998

“…Il y avait un manque de clarte´des objectifs, des responsabilite´s mal de´finies et des perspectives diffe´rentes selon les multiples intervenants en fonction de leurs inte´reˆts propres ou de leurs organisations. Il existait par exemple des inte´reˆts divergents entre technocrates de´sireux de maximiser la production agricole et les ide´ologues du parti unique qui supportaient les dogmes de l'humanisme et pre´conisaient un de´veloppement agricole a`partir des coope´ratives et des fermes d'Etat (Dumont, 1981;Wood et al, 1990;Fenichel et Smith 1992;Jansen et Rukovo, 1992;Raison, 1996).…”

“…Une part de ces fonds, ce´de´s a`un taux infe´rieur a`celui de l'inflation, ne fut jamais rembourse´e et une autre fut de´tourne´e de son usage agricole pour enrichissement personnel (Turok: 1989: 48). De meˆme, les actions de modernisation agricole sur le mode`le de la Re´volution Verte furent un grand e´chec e´conomique du fait des lourdes subventions supporte´es par l'É tat et parce que les technologies e´taient adapte´es aux moyens et grands fermiers et non aux contraintes des petits agriculteurs repre´sentant la majorite´de la population (Dumont, 1981;Jansen et Rukovo, 1992;Fenichel and Smith, 1992).…”

Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Africa

“…Uniform pricing was billed as being synonymous with equity, but analysis of the consequences indicates that the opposite was the case. "Uniform pricing Zambia depressed the price received by the poorest segment of the population, i.e., farmers in the distant (non border) deficit areas and has inflated the price received by better-off (and more politically vocal) farmers in surplus regions, particularly the Eastern province," Jansen and Rukovo (1992) wrote. Panterritorial and panseasonal pricing encouraged the production of maize in areas not suited to the crop and also greatly increased the transport costs that had to be covered by subsidies to NAMBOARD, which had taken over the marketing depot network.…”