Societal Demands and Government Choices: Agricultural Producer Price Policy in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Recent studies of Africa's continuing agrarian crisis have focused on the insufficient prices governments pay farmers as one of the key causes of declining food production. However, in Zimbabwe agricultural producer prices have, in general, provided positive incentives for agricultural production, and government has avoided the disastrous trap of a cheap food that has destroyed the agrarian base of so many other countries. The World Bank, for instance, has noted that in Zimbabwe, government intervention in producer prices (and marketing) has generally been favorable or not seriously unfavorable to agricultural production.' To understand why Zimbabwe has differed so dramatically from the rest of Africa it is necessary to study Zimbabwe's price-setting process and the contrasting pressures various lobbying groups can bring to bear upon the government of Zimbabwe. In turn, this investigation of agricultural producer price policy will also enable more light to be shed on the neglected areas of the nature of decision making in Third World governments and the autonomy of the state. These theoretical issues are especially important to address because previous analytic investigations have slighted them and therefore not adequately explained the nature of the government process when setting producer prices.