本文是一篇农业推广论文，笔者认为贸易自由化是一个重要的现象，预计将使贸易协定所涉国家受益。此外，技术转让旨在提高一个国家的生产力和经济发展。关注津巴布韦经济在其农业和工业部门继续面临挑战，尽管该国参与了各种贸易协定，并获得了援助，试图提高生产力，这项研究提议发展津巴布韦的农业和粮食价值链，并将其纳入区域和全球价值链。
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
Agriculture is considered as the backbone of the Zimbabwean economy and about 70% of the population depend on agriculture for their livelihood. The major food crops the country grows are maize, small grains, wheat, groundnuts and beans. Major cash crops include tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, soya bean and horticultural crops. The livestock sector is comprised of beef and dairy cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and poultry (Government of Zimbabwe, 2018). The sector is linked to other various manufacturing and industrial sectors that use its produce as raw materials for other uses. After the Land reform programme in 2000, the farm structures were distributed resulting in 98% of the farmers being smallholders who have limited farming skills. This has led to the country being uncompetitive, obtaining low productivity and having poor access to markets. When it comes to trading in the international market, Zimbabwe is not very much integrated in the global market.
From years past, it was considered as Africa’s bread basket although, not adequate data is available to support that notion. However, the nation is now considered to be a net importer of most necessity goods and there is therefore need to restore and develop the country’s ability to feed and contribute to Africa’s bread basket. (The World Bank Group, 2019). Moreover, based on the Forum for China and African Cooperation (FOCAC) Action Plan (2019-2021), Zimbabwe has an opportunity to improve its development. This Action plan was developed at the 2018 Beijing Summit and is the 7th Ministerial Conference that was held in September 2018. Eight major initiatives were announced with regards to the collaboration between China and Africa with the aim of strengthening the China-Africa Cooperation.
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1.2 Background
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country that covers an area of 390 580 square kilometres. The country lies in the Southern part of Africa and borders with Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana, South African and Namibia. Its climate is classified as tropical and the country is divided into five Agro-ecological regions depending on climate and soil type. Agriculture is the pillar of the economy.
Figure 1 Zimbabwean Map Source: (United Nations, 2021)
Zimbabwe’s agricultural production has in the past years decreased which has led to the sector losing its competitiveness and the nation relying on imports to supplement the domestic production (Webber et al., 2013). Despite the technology that has been disseminated through various forms such as financial credit, training, improved seeds and machinery, the country still faces low productivity in the agricultural sector. This had led to some value chain actors to opt for importing inputs for their production processes rather than buying them locally. This is because as it stands, importing inputs has become relatively cheaper than buying locally since the low yields are influencing the cost of local prices charged. These high prices charged on the local agricultur
