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Charles Dhewa Correspondent
There is often no reliable market for agricultural commodities in most farming areas because everyone has the same commodity.

No one sees the need to buy what they already have. It takes demand from communities where commodities are scarce for farmers in high producing areas to derive income from their agricultural activities.

However, the most important value comes from non-farming activities like mining, tourism, forestry, service industries and several types of value addition industries.

Many farmers are realising that depending on agriculture alone is not enough for a sustainable livelihood.

Some of the brilliant combinations that are gaining currency include farming and carpentry, farming and trading as well as farming and processing commodities at local business centres and growth points like Murambinda, Jerera, Nkayi, Lupane, Binga, Gokwe, Magunje, Murazabani, Checheche and many others.

Building a more discerning farmer

While many people continue to take farming as a much easier undertaking, an increase in the number of farmers and commodities is increasing the complexity of farming as a business in Zimbabwe.

The ability to produce commodities is no longer an advantage. Profit-oriented farmers need skills to scan the environment for signals of change and be able to react swiftly.

Unfortunately, most agricultural training courses do not provide farmers with the ability to connect the dots between people, ideas and markets. An informed perspective is becoming more important than ever in anticipating market expectations.

From evidence gathered by eMKambo, some of the most successful farmers now depend on non-farming activities. Such farmers have become aware of their diverse roles.

One farmer can be an artisan, a breeder, a marketer, a paravet, etc. This is normally critical when a new seed variety or livestock breed gets into a community. Someone has to have knowledge of how to grow it, process it or package it as well as sell it.

This leads to the development of production, processing and preservation utensils like baskets fashioned from local reeds, clay pots and grinding stones and mature.

Some farmers end up specialising in producing livestock yorks, skins, drums and other tools. All this starts from commodities getting into communities.

Innovation around existing local technologies

Most farmers do not want to spend their off-seasons idle. They get into producing or repairing tools in preparation for the coming farming season.

That is how they start innovating around existing technology. For instance, black smiths can start repairing ploughs, substituting some parts with local forms of iron that are stronger.

Tools like scotch-carts, tractors, motorcycles, bicycles that have come from elsewhere into the community are studied and locally repaired.

Also common is utilisation of local resources to produce drums for entertainment or traditional purposes, baskets for carrying food to the market, clay pots for cooking and storing some crop varieties. All these tools are a source of income.

Most of the community tools have gender dimensions. Some modern enterprises have become a domain of women because women are good in processing groundnuts and producing other women-oriented products.

Where skills have been passed from one generation to the other, women become manufacturers of winnowing baskets and other processing utensils. Such skills create niches for specialists and can be expressed through commodities which do not often pass through urban markets.

That is also how community of practice-oriented industries have developed. Unfortunately they remain largely undocumented.

Connecting entrepreneurship and artisanry with farming produces a complete and resilient ecosystem. Unfortunately this is not being taken further into the modern world for patenting into local investment models.

Some of the knowledge is being stolen or hijacked and comes back as negative perceptions of local technologies. For instance, local peanut butter is considered full of aflatoxins and therefore unhealthy.

The same label is attached to meat and other foods processed and preserved in indigenous ways. This colonial mentality in the name of science breaks relationships which should be building local enterprises through traceable evolutionary pathways.

Locally brewed beer is tagged unhealthy, forcing many local consumers to end up going to local bottle stores, shying away from supporting their local socio-economic ecosystems.

Several SMEs that are now producing agricultural tools like ploughs and hoes acquired their skills from Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS).

This knowledge has moved to growth points and up-markets like Harare. Baskets come from Honde Valley, tied to indigenous knowledge related to carrying avocadoes and other commodities from those areas.

Farmers from Mutoko have become good at recycling pallets to create tomato crates and boxes so that they do not cut trees for that purpose. Where small grains are common, appropriate tools have been developed for generations.

It is the same story in communities where livestock are major socio-economic drivers. All this knowledge should be documented and preserved because it provides an economic driver for rural industrialisation and development.

The power of socio-economic inclusive networks

Most rural communities where agriculture is a major economic driver are beginning to thrive on inclusive networks in which agriculture co-exists non-agricultural sectors.

Besides generating effective socio-economic wisdom, these networks are quietly evolving into resilient governance systems. They also demonstrate the extent to which meaningful socio-economic progress comes from focusing beyond formal organisations to embrace the wider society.

In many rural districts of Zimbabwe, silent networks, some based on kinship ties and clans, are embracing diverse sectors and stakeholders so that they work together on shared aspirations and goals at community levels.

To the extent that they solve most of their local challenges, these networks are an emerging form of effective governance. Development actors and policy makers can make a difference by enhancing the functionality, wisdom and impact of these networks in ways that empower them to organise community affairs and determine local people’s collective destiny.

Many communities that have seen donor support failing to bring permanent solutions are getting excited about the evolving power of their local networks, driven by relevant economic drivers such as agriculture, artisanry and non-agricultural economic activities.

Influencing the emergence of wise local networks in rural communities

Due to the absence of predictable markets and increase in climate variability, community networks and relationships are becoming more diverse and adaptive at scale as part of coping mechanisms.

Rather than wait for top-down formal organisations, many local networks have begun to share activities on the ground and deal with local community issues as they unfold.

Traditional leaders, community leaders and local businesses are seeing the merits of coming together in building resilient communities.

As they do so, agriculture becomes a more powerful engine for growth. Examples of this new realisation is an increase in the number of communities that are building their own local markets and holding centres where they can bulk their commodities, sort and grade before inviting buyers.

This is slowly addressing the age-old problem where farmers from one community would go and compete in the same urban market.

An important part of new awareness is working together toward shared impact on poverty, local health care systems and climate change. In most cases, agriculture provides the impetus for most of these initiatives.

Where money is not available, agricultural commodities are used as currency. Communities have realised that if they are going to wait for money from elsewhere, they would have to wait for a very long time before their situation starts improving.

Thousands of committed eyes, ears, heads, hands and hearts working together on the ground in every aspect of issues that affect them can rapidly improve the level and texture of their impact than waiting for donor support which often weakens their social fabric.

Using agriculture to crowd-source solutions and priorities

Instead of taking agriculture are the only source of income, many communities are beginning to see beyond narrowly framed interests to develop shared goals and standards around several non-agricultural socio-economic opportunities.

Where agriculture is the major economic driver, it is only used to crowd- source local solutions and priorities.

Previously over-looked sources of wisdom such as informal markets, and relationships are now being included in community decision-making.

By working together in an inclusive fashion, communities are taking into account a wide range of perspectives, experiences, interests and needs.

This ensures everyone is aware of long-term benefits from local initiatives as opposed to relying on short-term interventions from outside.

•  Charles Dhewa is a proactive knowledge management specialist and chief executive officer of Knowledge Transfer Africa (Pvt) (www.knowledgetransafrica.com) whose flagship eMKambo (www.emkambo.co.zw ) has a presence in more than 20 agricultural markets in Zimbabwe. He can be contacted on: [email protected]; Mobile: +263 774 430 309 / 772 137 717/ 712 737 430.