Subsistence farmers rethink priorities

The farm of Lion Mahlalela, a headman in the Mananga area to the far north of the country, is the last Swazi homestead before a barbed wire fence that announces the "no-man's land" separating the kingdom from South Africa.

For 60 years, the Mahlalela clan have kept a "likhaya", or multi-generation home at this location. The immediate community is named after the family cemetery.

But two key factors distinguish the current Mahlalela homestead from those of his forefathers. Mahlalela, a Christian, is not a polygamist, and gone are the thatched huts where his father and earlier male progenitors kept their multiple wives in order of seniority. Secondly, he has broken with a tradition of subsistence farming to plant a cash crop, cotton, this year.

"The trouble with subsistence farming is when the rains fail there is nothing to subsist on," he told IRIN. Unlike maize and pumpkins, cotton is considered a drought-resistant crop. "You can't eat it, but you can sell it, and earn money for the children's school fees and our other needs," he explained.

Mahlalela's farming techniques are environmentally friendly. He ploughs with a team of oxen, and manure from his cattle kraal fertilizes his fields, where maize and groundnuts previously grew, good rains willing. But his homestead, which is not electrified, relies on firewood collected from a vanishing forest nearby, and his cattle number among a national herd of 800,000 that are overgrazing the country's pasture lands that can accommodate only 500,000 cows, according to the agriculture department.

Formerly productive land is turning to desert as vegetation is devoured by cattle, and attempts to cultivate marginal land have resulted in soil erosion, leading to the salinisation of rivers.

At the same time, mounting population pressures are creating a social toll in a kingdom where it is the birthright of every Swazi man to receive from his chief at marriage a plot of land to build a house, a field to cultivate, and pasture land, all at no cost.

"The traditional farms have got to become economically productive," said Agriculture Minister Roy Fanourakis, a third-generation farmer. "In fact, we've had such success in promoting cash crops, I think subsistence farming is a bit of an anachronism."

Eighty percent of Swaziland's 970,000 people live on small holding farms on Swazi Nation Land under chiefs, where they pay no taxes and are provided with free veterinary services. But two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line, and increasingly valuable farmland is under-utilised, according to Fanourakis, who sees no reason why a county threaded with rivers and streams should suffer crops withering in the fields.

The 2001-2002 cropping season will not see drought, according to Mandla Dlamini, a department officer with the national weather service. In terms of seasonal rain measurement, this may be true, but following heavy early summer rains that encouraged farmers to extensively plant maize - the national staple food - six weeks of no rains at the plants' critical blossoming stage stunted or killed most of the crop. By the time rains returned, the National Disaster Task Force had secured a US $2 million grant from Japan for maize imports to stave off starvation.

"No aid would have been necessary if the farmers would invest in gas-powered or even foot-powered pumps to bring irrigation water up from the streams," explained agriculture field officer Jabu Mngomezulu.

Lion Mahlalela is one convert to new thinking. Tired of seeing his crops die due to the caprice of the area's weather, he has opted for a new crop that has already been successfully tested by his neighbour.

But new techniques bring challenges of their own. Mahlalela will have to invest in insecticides to protect his cotton crop from predators. Agriculture field officers like Mngomezulu stop by to monitor chemical usage to decrease river-polluting run-off. "We also must convince the indvuna (headman, Mahlalela's local title) to have his cows urinate away from the river," Mngomezulu added.

Chief Malunge of Nyangeni in central Swaziland does not fear that making subsistence farms economically viable will undermine traditional ways. "The old ways were predicated on the needs of the time. Today, we need to raise standards of living. It is a matter of survival, particularly when one out of three Swazis is HIV positive, and drugs must be purchased."

Raising vegetables for the local market is a start, but is not sufficient to make best use of valuable agriculture land, Chief Malunge said. Swaziland's 350 chiefs have endorsed a government initiative to urge farmers to pool their land, and form cooperatives.

King Mswati III, the country's monarch, has launched several financing schemes to provide capital for such ventures, particularly for the communal cultivation of sugar cane, which is the kingdom's number one export. Of the 526,241 mt of sugar sold by Swaziland to the European Union, Asia and other markets last year, about 10 percent was grown on local cooperatives run by former peasant farmers.

Within a few months, irrigation water from the recently completed Maguga Dam in northern Swaziland will be made available to cooperatives in the eastern Lubombo region, mostly for sugar cultivation. In anticipation of this reliable source of water for a parched area that has never known such a luxury, 17 cooperatives have been formed from individual farms where once several generations of a single family scratched a maize crop out of soil whose fertility depended on unreliable rainfall.

There is an irony here not lost to Moses Thwala, a cooperative manager in the eastern Lubombo region. "The young people have gone to the towns because there are no jobs in the country, but now those of us who stayed will receive the tools (irrigation water) we need to make our fields prosper, while the towns have unemployment."

He does not say this vindictively, but with a wistful hope that the prodigal younger generation will return to their ancestral homes. The acceptance of new farming techniques and new realities, far from destroying the traditional homestead, may yet save it.