Efficiency Effects Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Mechanization and Fast Track Land Reform Programme: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

A development goal pursued by the Zimbabwean government even before the much-maligned fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) was expansion of agricultural production through agricultural mechanization. This goal has been pursued through the acquisition and use of tractors by arable crop farmers in communal and resettlement state land delineated during the period following the launch of the FTLRP. This research project investigated the combined impacts of mechanization and an unplanned land reform on agricultural productivity in the Bindura district of Zimbabwe. The existing land policy and the issue of technical efficiency in agricultural productivity are assumed to be the drivers of the programme. It is likely that these issues will be important considerations in determining the sustainability of the mechanization policy. A multistage sampling technique was used to randomly select 90 farmers in the study area and structured questionnaires were used to collect demographic, investment and production data which were subsequently fitted by means of the Stochastic Frontier Model. Results revealed that mechanization was an important factor in the performance of the farmers who participated in the programme. The results also suggest that availability of land and access to production resources are crucial to farm productivity. Despite these, overall production and productivity remain low and the hyperinflationary situation triggered by supply constraints are only beginning to slightly ease. As the national unity government grapples with the huge task to restore growth in the Zimbabwean economy, it is important that these issues are borne in mind.Technical Constraints, Market Access, Agricultural Development, Induced Innovation Model, The Stochastic Frontier model, The Productive Efficiency and Mandate of Extension, Farm Management,

A future for the graduate without a future

We have an innovative generation of graduates without a future. They make opportunities, work and non-work, creativity and protest, using their unprecedented information-richness. But we need a new economy. This can involve a redistribution of work so the unemployed become employed. For everyone this means rethinking the importance of income, consumption and growth, with positive effects for the climate change crisis. Mobility is a human right, more restricted than other types of globalization. It can match people to opportunities and boost growth and jobs. Alongside non-work and mobility are traditional left elements: investment over austerity, fairer taxes and distribution, regulation of the economy, an expanded alternative co-operative sector, and the foundations that a basic income and welfare state can provide for security and freedom. Today’s graduate has a future in an economy of redistributed work, mobility, public services and economic equality – its ideas fired by social movements and implemented via political ones

Performance of Smallholder Agriculture Under Limited Mechanization and the Fast Track Land Reform Program in Zimbabwe

agricultural mechanization, fast track land reform, agricultural development, Stochastic Frontier model, technical efficiency, agribusiness management, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, International Development, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Contact Information for the Members of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

Contact_Info_Dunlop_Commission.pdf: 154 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

“Miss, Miss, Look at What My Mother Sent Me from Jail”

When I tell people that I teach in a public school, especially when I go on to say that I teach at the Junior High level there is almost aIways snickering sounds and rolling eyes followed by horror stories from the past. They relate memories of crowded, noisy hallways filled with bullies; classrooms that felt like jail, teachers that were bored and lots of hormone driven mis-adventures. I just smile because I know it is all too true. I do not attempt to explain why, as an artist, I choose to return to the classroom after so many years or how I am inspired everyday by the energy and truth of the students I encounter. I have come to learn that this immediate reaction by others is only a small part of the whole experience

Front Cover

Clockwise from top left: Michael Lindblad ’94, Nathaniel Wight ’99, Tim Love ’07

Executive Summary of the Fact Finding Report of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

Executive_Summary_Dunlop_0594.pdf: 1367 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The turning points of EU cohesion policy, Working Paper Report to Barca Report

In more recent discussions on the future of Cohesion policy, however, both critics and supporters have tended to agree on the need for a “modernisation” of the policy, in recognition of existing weakness in the current approach and of the emerging challenges faced by the European economy, society and broader integration process. In this context of reform, this paper will take a step back in time to examine the origins and evolution of Cohesion policy, with a view to shedding some light on its core dynamics and revealing some of the lessons of history. In doing so, the main objectives of this paper are to identify the main historical turning points in Cohesion policy, the trends and nature of changes witnessed, and the key underlying factors facilitating or obstructing policy reform over time