Spreading a farm household's income across more activities raises earnings only up to a point, after which each extra activity is linked to lower income, according to University of Fort Hare research in north-eastern Zimbabwe described in Food for Mzansi by its authors, agricultural economist Freddy Ruzhani and his doctoral supervisor, Professor Abbyssinia Mushunje.
The researchers surveyed 408 households in Mashonaland East province between May and July 2024, half of them beneficiaries of Pfumvudza, Zimbabwe's input subsidy programme launched in the 2020/21 season, and held 12 focus groups. Pfumvudza gives free maize seed, fertiliser and lime to farmers who establish conservation agriculture plots with minimum tillage, crop-residue mulch and rotation with legumes.
They found an inverted U: income climbs as households add activities, then falls once labour, capital, assets and management attention run too thin. Most households were past that peak. More than half were medium diversifiers and 14.5 per cent highly diversified; about 27 per cent were low diversifiers and 2 per cent specialised in one activity. The added activities were mostly low-return ones such as petty trading, casual farm labour and small informal businesses, which the authors describe as survival strategies rather than opportunities.
Subsidy beneficiaries were also less likely to grow labour-hungry cash crops such as tobacco or cotton, since Pfumvudza plots themselves demand a lot of work, and more commercially minded farmers appeared to be opting out of the programme. The authors call the result "more becomes less": subsidies broaden household activity but push it further past the point where it pays, making them a coping mechanism rather than a way out of poverty.
What decided whether diversification paid was the assets behind it: tertiary education, livestock, irrigation, formal credit, contract farming and regular contact with extension officers. Households with those moved into tobacco, horticulture and stable off-farm businesses; those without took up whatever was at hand. Those assets were concentrated among households that were already better off.
The authors do not argue for scrapping input subsidies. They recommend expanding and rehabilitating irrigation, the most consistent enabler of high-return diversification in their data; strengthening contract farming in tobacco and horticulture with transparent pricing and legal protection for smallholders; and investing in community veterinary services and dipping facilities to protect livestock.
Photo: Nyasha l guzha / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Food for Mzansi (written by Freddy Ruzhani and Abbyssinia Mushunje)
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