HARARE - Zimbabwe 's horticultural industry has incurred a 59 percent drop in export earnings over the past six years which industry officials blamed on disruptions caused in the sector by the government's chaotic and often violent land reforms.
The Horticultural Promotion Council (HPC) on Wednesday told ZimOnline that the sector which earned US$143 million six years ago would this year generate only US$90 in export receipts.
The sector which grew an average 15 percent per annum before the land reforms began in 2000 could have earned US$300 million this year at the same rate of growth, the HPC said.
US$300 million is enough to buy enough petrol and diesel for fuel dry Zimbabwe for at least five months. The country, grappling its worst fuel crisis in decades consumes at least US$50 million worth of fuel per month according to government figures.
HPC director Basilio Sandamu said: "Structural changes in the agricultural sector affected the supply base of horticultural production. People allocated farms have no technical expertise to maintain horticultural projects.
"The displacement of white farmers has resulted in Zimbabwe losing on competition from neighbours. We are not alone in the (horticultural export) market and there are others prepared to take the opportunities that we let slip through our fingers."
President Robert Mugabe and his government in 2000 seized land from minority white farmers and gave it over to landless blacks in what they said was a long overdue correction of an iniquitous land tenure system under which whites owned 75 percent of the best arable land while the majority blacks were cramped on poor soils.
But the government's failure to provide black peasants resettled on former white farms with skills training and inputs support has seen agricultural production plummeting by about 30 percent since 2000 while food production fell by about 60 percent.
An estimated four million Zimbabweans or nearly half of the country's more than 11 million people require 1.2 million tonnes of food aid or they will starve.
The HPC said the plight of the horticultural industry had been worsened by strained relations between the European Union and Harare . The EU, which three years ago slapped targeted sanctions on Mugabe and his top officials for violating human rights and rigging elections, is the biggest market for fresh cut flowers from Zimbabwe.