AGRICULTURAL value chains are major strategic components of the national economy.
When food insecurity becomes endemic, the country’s independence and sovereignty are threatened.
The country then must mobilise its ‘elite troops’, those with requisite knowledge, skills and experience to drive hunger and starvation out through enhanced agricultural production.
The human factor is at the centre of all efforts to secure food security and a stable economy.
The human factor is made up of the agricultural actors who include the farmers and agricultural experts from academic institutions and private and public sector organisations.
Agricultural knowledge and skills must be imparted to the citizens, young and old, through the school, college and university system to ensure efficient and sustainable production of food supplies that underpin national independence and sovereignty.
If the agricultural education value chain is dysfunctional, the country remains anchored in endemic food insecurity as its citizens fail to develop, adapt and deploy appropriate agricultural production technologies to ensure food self-sufficiency.
Given Africa’s perennial food insecurity, can we say our agricultural education systems are functioning efficiently, if at all?
Do educational institutions adequately prepare the young citizens to build the agricultural components of the national economy?
Do the educated fully participate in agricultural production?
At a conference of agricultural scientists from sub-Saharan countries, held in Yaounde, Cameroon a few years back, I challenged delegates to quantify the impact of their agricultural degrees on the local economy in their countries.
For example, could they indicate by how many kilogrammes per hectare yields of given crops had increased on account of them acquiring a university degree in agriculture.
Or was there a technology that they had developed which now helped people to produce more crops?
Shockingly, the majority of scientists had contributed nothing new to their agricultural economies.
They taught at colleges, did research which they published in scholarly journals far removed from the food insecurity and poverty in the village.
They attended international conferences and got paid nice per diems and allowances by donors.
I lost many friends, but I did not care. As educated Africans we needed a reality check.
Was our education contributing to building the economies of Africa?
If not why had our poor parents wasted their scarce resources sending us to school?
The same can be said about the impact of Zimbabwe’s agricultural education on efforts to build the local economy.
Do school leavers and college graduates possess enough useful skills and knowledge to initiate businesses in agriculture?
Are educational institutions dispensing practical useful agricultural education to the masses?
Then comes the attitudes of Africans and Zimbabweans in particular, to agriculture.
As a young science teacher at Moleli Secondary School in the mid-70s, I used to help my parents to weed the fields during the school holidays.
My parents were approached by several neighbours who questioned: “How can you make a teacher work in the field?”
Another direct question was: “Chokwadi mungati ticha vasakure mumunda veduwe?”
Interestingly I had grown up in the same local area assisting my parents in the field without neighbours raising any questions.
Now that they knew I had been to college and qualified as a teacher, their understanding was that I was now exempt or ‘freed’ from manual work such as weeding crops.
How many parents believe that their children will be ‘freed’ from manual labour when they become educated?
If ‘educated’ Zimbabweans do not do physical work, who will build our economy?
This anti-manual work mentality is a colonial disease.
It sits at the centre of the dislike for agriculture by the so-called educated.
Africans were put to work by white colonisers: hard manual work in agricultural fields.
The experience was similar to that of black slaves shipped to America and the Caribbean.
The whites were a privileged class.
Africans acquired better privileges by acquiring the whiteman’s education.
The educated expected to enjoy the privileges of the whites; that included not doing hard manual work in the field.
So the educated do not want to work.
It is a mental state where Africans have become conditioned to looking down on agricultural work as being below the dignity of the educated.
At one point or another, civil servants in various professions have been urged to improve their qualifications.
Traditionally the seniors (more educated/higher qualifications) remain in the office while the ‘less educated’ go out into the field to do the physical work.
If all workers upgraded their qualifications, and moved to a higher ‘class’ exempt from manual work, departments would be full of ‘chiefs and no Indians’ as they say.
Most of the real field work would remain undone.
Service provision would suffer seriously.
How many departments have experienced this phenomenon where the more educated refuse or are reluctant to undertake routine, but essential work?
What are the consequences of these negative misguided attitudes to work on building Zimbabwe’s economy?
Some will argue that there is plenty cheap labour in Africa!
But the truth is labour without skills is no use!
Let me give another example from further afield.
A Zambian soil scientist came to America on a work attachment with the United States Department of Agriculture.
He was to work with American collaborators on soil correlation.
This exercise involved digging soil pits and studying the soil layers (profiles).
On the first day out, our Zambian soil scientist went to the study site in his suit and tie.
On arrival the American scientists, both of whom had doctorate degrees jumped into the soil pit and started studying the profile and collecting soil samples.
The Zambian visiting scientist remained in the car.
After 30 minutes, the hosts called out to the Zambian to find out if he was not joining them.
He replied: “Have the field assistants now arrived?”
The Americans replied: “No we do not have field assistants; we do the work ourselves.”
The Zambian was embarrassed and apologised.
He pointed out that back home in Africa he would be sitting in the shade while field assistants did the physical work.
He had a Masters degree and so was sufficiently educated enough not to do strenuous field work, or so he thought.
But his American colleagues had doctorate degrees and they were fully engaged in physical work.
Our Zambian colleague told us his experience himself when he visited us at a nearby university.
By the time he went back home to Zambia he was looking trim, having lost quite a few kilogrammes as he worked with his American hosts out in the field.
And so it seems clear that attitudes towards practical agriculture among many educated Africans are often negative.
That will not help us to build vibrant agricultural economies let alone banish endemic food insecurity on the African continent.
Much of the struggle must be fought in the hearts and minds of the Africans themselves.
We must be prepared to sweat for our lunch.