HARARE – Zimbabwe faces another lean agricultural season with the majority of the country’s large-scale producing white commercial farmers saying they are unable to plant crops due to ongoing disturbances on farms.

The mainly white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said the majority of its members were yet to plant crops for the forthcoming 2009/10 season and may fail to do so due to farm invasions that have continued despite formation of a coalition government nine months ago.

CFU president Deon Theron at the weekend said a surge in violence against the few remaining Zimbabwean commercial farmers and their workers was cause for great concern both for food security in Zimbabwe and for the region.

He noted that the CFU has recorded a steady continuation, and in some cases escalation of state-sponsored violence and unlawful disturbances on commercial farms over the past 12 months.

“Owing to the ongoing violations of commercial farmers and their workers, the prosecution threats and lack of security of tenure, the majority of commercial farmers will not be able to plant crops this season,” the CFU chief said.

Agricultural production has plunged since 2000, when President Robert Mugabe began seizing white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black farmers deprived of land under previous white minority governments.

For example an estimated tonnage of the staple maize crop for the 2009/10 season was just 500 000 metric tonnes, down from more than two million tones at the beginning of Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme in 2000.

Theron said CFU members continue to be driven from their farms by land reform beneficiaries carrying fraudulently issued offer letters who often take the law into their own hands.

“Last week the number of farmers who were evicted through the courts doubled, with 152 of the estimated 400 remaining farmers currently facing prosecution,” said Theron.

Five were found guilty of remaining on their farms and ordered to vacate their properties and were fined around US$300.

A total of 12 farmers and 34 workers have been convicted to date this year, heightening insecurity in the agricultural sector countrywide.

The CFU chief said what made the situation in commercial agriculture particularly unsustainable was the fact that the people who are supposed to enforce the rule of law such as police and judicial officers were among the beneficiaries of the free-for-all land grab.

Theron urged the government to restore sanity in the agriculture sector and to urgently address the issue of compensation for farmers who lost their land.

“Since the land reform programme began in 2000, compensation has only been paid for 203 farms out of the 6 571 gazetted farms,” he said.

He said the CFU was exploring potential solutions, particularly regarding the elements of both compensation and restitution for our members and past members.

By Zimonline