Challenges and Prospects of Zimbabwe’s Command Farming in Unlocking the Country’s Smallholder Agricultural Economy

The study sought to establish and analyze the challenges and prospects of Zimbabwe’s command farming in unlocking the country’s smallholder agricultural economy with particular reference to smallholder rural and A1 resettlement farmers in Bindura district of Zimbabwe. The main objective central to the study was; to examine challenges and prospects of the command farming initiative as a way of advancing the country’s agricultural sector, in an endeavor to curb poverty and food insecurity among the marginalized farming communities. To achieve this, a descriptive study design was used to select a sample of one hundred (100) participants who included ordinary grain producers, village heads, agricultural extension officers, and heads of government departments. A purposive or judgmental sampling technique was employed to select respondents for the study. To solicit for the relevant information unstructured interviews, key informant interviews and secondary sources of data were used. The generated data was finally subjected to descriptive statistics where frequency counts, means and percentages were employed, to make conclusive deductions from the findings. It was established that instead of being a panacea to food security quagmires bedeviling communities, Zimbabwe’s command agriculture is faced with numerous challenges due to disparity in the perceived outcomes of the new program by the farming community and the authoritarian implementers. This has resulted in a stalemate, which can only be solved by considering the initiative as a collective issue where communities and other stakeholders play a pivotal role for the attainment of the desired outcomes. It is critical that the government can only get the agricultural economy fixed through robust integration of all stakeholders and resource poor farmers at grassroots in important decision making structures