HEEP Goes HIP: When Farmers Become Partners in Their Own Future — A Non-State Actor Story

By Sydney Katunga Phiri

For Dr Shadreck Makombe, the journey from being a smallholder farmer to becoming a commercial farmer does not begin with the size of the land, but with what a farmer is able to do with it. A hectare, in his view, should not automatically be equated with subsistence farming if that hectare is being managed as a business, responding to market demand, producing consistently and generating an income that can be reinvested into the enterprise.

“You can be a smallholder farmer and still be farming commercially,” Makombe says. “The size of the farm is not the issue, but the activity on the farm.”

It is a philosophy that now informs his involvement with Zimbabwe’s Horticulture Enterprise Enhancement Project (HEEP), an IFAD-supported initiative designed to increase incomes, strengthen food security and empower smallholder farmers through profitable and sustainable horticultural value chains.

A farmer in Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province and president of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union, Makombe was selected as an anchor farmer after responding to an IFAD call for anchor firms and enterprises. His own experience of farming for local and export markets has shaped the way he sees the opportunity, particularly the possibility of bringing farmers who are still producing mainly for household consumption into a more organised commercial system.

“I participated in the advert by answering the questions as requested, and I was selected to work with IFAD,” he says.

For Makombe, the responsibility is not simply to produce more crops himself, but to help other farmers make the difficult transition from producing to survive to producing as a business.

“My role is to help uplift those farmers who are doing subsistence farming so that they become farmers who are doing farming as a business.”

That transition lies at the heart of his thinking. It requires more than putting seeds into the ground; it requires connecting farmers to markets, technical knowledge, appropriate inputs, production systems and the infrastructure needed to move a crop from the field to the buyer.

HEEP’s hub-and-spoke approach, in which anchor farms or firms can serve as commercial hubs for farmers organised in Agricultural Producer Groups, provides a framework within which that kind of organisation can take place. The project also has an explicit focus on inclusion, with women and young people forming important parts of its intended beneficiary base.

The proposition is straightforward, although making it work in practice will not be: if smallholders can organise around real market opportunities, they can begin to turn limited pieces of land into commercially oriented enterprises.

A partnership with the farmer inside it

There is another element of HEEP that particularly resonates with Makombe — its Public-Private-Producer Partnership, or 4P, model, which places the producer within the partnership rather than treating the farmer simply as the end recipient of a development intervention.

The scale of the project reflects the ambition. According to IFAD’s project information, planned financing totals approximately US$66.55 million, comprising US$37.14 million from IFAD, US$15 million from the OPEC Fund for International Development, about US$5.24 million from the Government of Zimbabwe, estimated local private-sector contributions of US$8.11 million and beneficiary contributions of about US$1 million.

For Makombe, however, the significance of such investment is ultimately measured not in the size of the financing package but in whether it reaches the farmer in a way that helps build a sustainable agricultural business.

“The markets are the ones which determine what type of crop they want and how they want it,” he says.

That observation changes the starting point. Instead of a farmer producing a crop and only afterwards beginning the search for a buyer, Makombe envisages farmers organising their production around what the market is actually asking for, including the quantity, quality and specifications required.

“If the market tells us what it wants, then we organise farmers to meet the quantities.”

Peas and berries are among the examples he cites in thinking about local and export opportunities, although the particular crop would ultimately depend on market demand and the requirements of the buyer. In such a system, the farmer is not simply growing what is familiar, but beginning to think like an entrepreneur whose production decisions are connected to a customer.

That is an important shift in mindset because commercial agriculture is ultimately about the relationship between production and the market. A good harvest that cannot be sold at a viable price is not necessarily a successful farming business.

Making small farms work together

Makombe’s answer to the limitations faced by individual smallholders is aggregation, an idea that allows farmers to retain their individual farms while working collectively around a common commercial opportunity.

A farmer might begin with one hectare and, if the enterprise proves viable, expand to two hectares and eventually more. One hectare on its own may produce too little volume to interest a major buyer, but hundreds of farmers producing the same crop to agreed standards can collectively create a much more substantial supply.

“If you have farmers producing the same crop, then you can organise them,” he explains.

The logic extends beyond selling the harvest. Farmers who organise around a common crop can potentially coordinate the purchase of inputs, negotiate from a stronger position when buying in larger quantities and make it easier to bring technical expertise to a group rather than trying to provide the same support to every farmer individually.

Makombe sees himself working with agronomists, soil scientists, specialists in good agricultural practices and other experts whose knowledge can help farmers produce consistently and meet the standards demanded by their chosen markets.

“I have to liaise with agronomists, experts in good agricultural practices, soil scientists and other experts who will make farming a success,” he says.

The significance of aggregation, therefore, is not that small farms somehow become one farm. They remain separate enterprises, but by coordinating production they can begin to access some of the advantages associated with scale.

The anchor farm and the cold chain

For Makombe, the same principle applies to infrastructure, particularly the cold chain that is so important to horticulture.

Fresh produce can lose its value quickly when harvesting is followed by delays, poor handling or inadequate storage, yet the cost of cold rooms, refrigerated transport and other post-harvest infrastructure can be beyond the reach of an individual smallholder.

“Most of these small farmers cannot afford cold rooms,” Makombe says.

His proposed response is to develop shared logistics through which farmers can bring their produce to a central point before it is transported to the market, including the use of refrigerated vehicles for longer journeys.

“So I will have trucks where people come to deliver their produce, and refrigerated vehicles to take it to near and far-away markets.”

Makombe sees his Hereford Farm as part of that wider coordinating concept, although the precise arrangements for infrastructure, financing, ownership and operation would depend on the agreements established among the relevant participants.

What matters in the idea is the principle of shared access. A farmer should not necessarily have to own a cold room, a fleet of trucks and every other piece of equipment required to enter a modern horticultural value chain before being allowed to participate in it.

What happens when many small farms become one market force?

Makombe uses pea production to illustrate why aggregation interests him.

Under favourable conditions, he cites a possible yield of around 15,000 kilograms per hectare. To demonstrate the arithmetic more conservatively, imagine a farmer producing 10,000 kilograms on one hectare and selling the crop at a hypothetical US$3 per kilogram. That would amount to US$30,000 in gross sales before the costs of production, labour, irrigation, packaging, transport, marketing and all the other expenses that stand between a harvest and actual profit.

Now multiply that one hectare by 100 farmers and the illustrative gross sales rise to US$3 million; multiply it again to 1,000 farmers and the figure becomes US$30 million.

These numbers are not a forecast of what farmers will earn, nor are they a guarantee of yield or price. They simply demonstrate what can happen to the scale of an agricultural opportunity when many relatively small producers are organised around the same market.

And that is perhaps the more important point in Makombe’s argument: commercial farming does not necessarily have to mean putting more and more land into the hands of fewer and fewer farmers. It can also mean making many smaller farms commercially stronger by connecting them to one another and to markets.

From production to a wider economy

The possibilities do not end when the fresh produce reaches the market.

Makombe also sees value addition as part of the equation, particularly where production exceeds the immediate demand for fresh produce. Tomatoes provide a useful example. Rather than allowing an oversupply to become waste, processing can potentially turn part of that surplus into another commercial product, provided there is an appropriate processing facility, a viable market and the investment required to make it work.

“If tomatoes are not enough, or if there is an oversupply, then they can be manufactured,” he says.

That is what Makombe means when he talks about making the agricultural value chain more pronounced “from garden to fork”. Production is only the beginning; aggregation, transportation, refrigeration, packaging, processing and marketing all have a role to play in determining how much value is ultimately created from what comes out of the soil.

“The value chain, in its sense, from garden to fork becomes more pronounced,” he says.

For rural economies, that distinction matters because agriculture can create economic activity well beyond the farmer who plants the crop. Transporters, packers, processors, input suppliers, technicians and other service providers can all become part of the wider ecosystem, provided the underlying markets are strong enough to support them.

Bringing CAADP down to the farmer

Makombe’s thinking about farmer participation also connects directly with his work as a member of the CAADP Non-State Actors Group, where he has been advocating for stronger participation by farmers and their organisations in agricultural transformation.

For him, continental agricultural commitments have little meaning if they remain at the level of declarations, conferences and policy documents without eventually reaching the people whose hands are in the soil.

“CAADP should cascade down to the farmers on the ground,” he argues.

That is where he sees farmer organisations playing an important role alongside government, particularly in mobilising producers, representing their interests and helping bridge the distance between agricultural policy and the realities confronting farmers.

“In collaboration, or working hand in hand with government, Non-State Actors are filling that gap,” he says.

The argument is also a challenge to a development culture in which farmers can sometimes be positioned as beneficiaries waiting for programmes, rather than as people with knowledge, experience and a direct economic stake in the success of agriculture.

A farmer knows what it costs to produce a crop, what happens when it rains at the wrong time, what a poor road does to a perishable harvest and what it means when a buyer changes a specification at the last minute. Those realities are not peripheral to agricultural policy; they are the realities that determine whether agricultural policy succeeds.

Farmers as partners

This is ultimately where Makombe’s argument comes together.

Development institutions can provide finance and technical support; governments can create policy and institutional frameworks; private companies can provide commercial networks and market opportunities; scientists can contribute specialised knowledge. Yet, after all the plans have been written and all the partnerships announced, somebody still has to plant the crop, nurture it, harvest it and get it into the food system.

“Without food, there is no life,” Makombe says.

For that reason, he believes farmers and their organisations should be treated as partners in agricultural development rather than simply as beneficiaries of programmes designed elsewhere.

The distinction may appear semantic, but it has practical consequences. A beneficiary receives an intervention; a partner participates in shaping it. A beneficiary is often measured by how many people have been reached; a partner is concerned with whether the enterprise actually works.

For CAADP, that distinction is particularly important because continental ambitions eventually have to find their expression on farms, in markets and in the incomes and livelihoods of the people who produce Africa’s food.

HEEP Goes HIP

HEEP is designed to support smallholder participation in profitable and sustainable horticultural value chains, but the ultimate performance of individual enterprises will depend on the realities of farming itself — production costs, yields, weather, infrastructure, market prices, quality requirements, access to finance and the ability to secure and retain buyers.

Makombe’s vision nevertheless offers a useful way of thinking about what transformation could look like. A farmer who begins with one hectare should not have to remain a one-hectare subsistence farmer forever; with the right combination of skills, market access, organisation and commercial opportunity, that farmer could build an enterprise capable of expanding and creating opportunities for others.