One of the less emphasised impacts of COVID-19 is its impact on social cohesion and the sense of community that is characteristic of African smallholder farmers.
In many areas communities, farmers engage in agricultural activities together to lessen the burden on each other.
The ability of smallholder farmers to work together in each other’s fields constitutes a significant factor in ensuring food and income security for smallholder farmers.
Tsamwai Muusha (60), a smallholder farmer from Chimanimani district working with PELUM Zimbabwe Member, TSURO Trust is one of the farmers who rely strongly on support from the community for labour.
Tsamwai says because of the initial lockdown his family was unable to harvest without the support of other farmers because they did not have enough labour. As a result his crops were rotting whilst some were being eaten by wild animals.
“The groundnuts that we grow are rotting right now because usually during harvest time we work together with others as a team and harvest quickly,” says Tsamwai.
“My children are quite young, the eldest in fourteen and the second is twelve, so right now it’s just the five of us [Him, his wife and three children] working in the field. We do not have enough labour to harvest so we are losing crops to baboons and it’s raining as well so the crops are rotting in the field,” adds Tsamwai.
Tsamwai is just one of many farmers who found themselves suddenly exposed and cut off from the critical support of the community. To make matters worse, the crops that he could harvest with the little labour he had, he had no market to sell them to.
His hope was that a way could be found to enable him to market his crops. This was the cry echoed by farmers across the country, which is why PELUM Zimbabwe urges government to invest in local and sustainable markets that utilise an Agroecological approach. This will ensure resilience so that future pandemics do not have the same impact on farmers’ livelihoods as COVID-19 had.