Abstract
The root causes of Zimbabwes economic and food crisis continue to garner debate as demonstrated by Anderssons critique of my recent African Affairs article. Andersson argues that the origins of Zimbabwes food crisis come from long-term trends in the communal sector since this sector provides the majority of maize - the countrys staple crop - to the country. He disputes that the food crisis has much if anything to do with misguided government policies and land reforms; this he claims is a popular yet problematic explanation.2 In particular Andersson argues that food production has slowly declined over the past 30 years for two main reasons that I do not discuss: (1) communal farmers have increasingly moved to marginal lands that are subject to lower and more erratic rainfall; and (2) maize production has increasingly been shouldered by communal farmers as commercial farmers moved to other more profitable export crops. His Figure 1 attempts to buttress this claim with lines that show communal farmers production of maize slowly increasing as commercial production decreases over a period of 30 years. His argument is that this is a better explanation for Zimbabwes food insecurity in recent years since the communal sector provides 60 percent of maize production yet is not captured in GDP data. (excerpt)
Published Version
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