Chapter 5: Sorghum Production and Trade Policies in Zimbabwe

The study focuses on policies on sorghum production and the subsequent trade volumes in Zimbabwe. Sorghum is in the small grain category, and its production has been dominating crop mixes in both the arid and semi-arid parts of Africa. It has been very integral as a safety net for drought resilience in Zimbabwe. Despite this importance of sorghum, policies on agriculture are biased towards maize, the staple food. This has adversely affected its production, as it is grown at small scale with communal farmers in the dry parts of the country being the most growers of the crop. The analysis takes the form of comparison of the pre- and post-policy implementation situations and infer on effectiveness. The pre-implementation period is 2009–2015 as compared to the post implementation period of 2016–2021. It has been found out that Zimbabwe has well-developed policies that deal with the production of cereal crops but not for each specific cereal. The whole issue comes from the fact that Zimbabwe is an agro-based country, and for the greater part of the population (over 50 %), agriculture is a source of their livelihood. Agriculture also contributes significantly to the Gross Domestic Product of the country. However, despite well-developed policies and subsequent trade, the country continues to import the bulk of its food for local consumption due to policy implementation challenges. The study recommends that in order to enhance food security in the country and subsequent increase in trade volumes, close monitoring of policy implementation is necessary.