In Conversation With Trevor: Mashumba: Women farmers need a lift

Women Who Farm Africa founder Ruramiso Mashumba says Zimbabwean women need empowerment to take leading roles in the agriculture sector.

Mashumba (RM), who runs Chomwedzi Farm in Marondera, told Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN) on the platform In Conversation with Trevor that women were the ones doing the most difficult tasks at farms, but their roles were not properly recognised.

Below is an extract from the interview.

TN: Ruramiso Mashumba, welcome to In Conversation With Trevor.

RM: Thank you very much Trevor.

• TN: We are delighted that you found the time to join us, to talk about something that you are very passionate about, farming.
• You have been farming Ruramiso now for 10 years, 10 years experience in farming at Chomwedzi Farm in Marondera.
• Why farming? I mean I have seen there is an excitement in the country, particularly with young people taking on to farming, why did you decide to get into it yourself?

RM: Well, that is an interesting question Trevor.

Actually, when I was growing up I did not know I was going to end up on a farm, but what I knew is I wanted to help people.

So when I was in high school I just had this passion for helping women and producing food.

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I actually thought I would end up in an NGO (non-governmental organisation).

Fortunately I went to a school that was very agriculture  based, which is Watershed College, and there we got to learn so much about farming.

I got to love the land, and my father at that time had just recently bought our farm, so I really loved the land and enjoyed farming.

I remember talking to my mom about wanting to work with food and then she also encouraged me to take up agriculture because there was a course at school, which was training people  agriculture but I did not think to myself that, as I was making these decisions, that it was very male-dominated and what the industry would think.

My parents were very encouraging of me and told me I could do anything and so that is how I started.

Then I did my course and I ended up farming.

TN: Talk to me about it, your father has a farm? Did you inherit the farm? Talk to us about that bit?

RM: It is a family farm. My father bought the farm about 20 years ago and he encouraged all of us to take up projects on the farm, but I am the only one who ended up taking the said projects.

So, I do live with my parents on the farm and I am farming there, so I would call it a family farm.

TN: So are you the one farming, or you are helping dad farm? Clarify that for us?

RM: I think I would say my parents are helping me because I am the one who is the farmer.

TN: Wow.

RM: I am the one who is farming and running the projects.

I am fortunate enough that my parents live on the farm so sometimes when I travel they can oversee things, but I am the one who farms and teaches my partners new agricultural skills.

Sometimes it is very difficult to get them to change old ways, but it is interesting.

TN: Did your father farm before you started?

RM: My father is not a commercial farmer, my father had a few cattle that he used to keep on the farm.

So our farm when I moved there was actually run down.

Not much was happening in terms of activity.

So, when I moved back to the farm after my university degree I was the one who started setting up systems and equipping the farm, putting up equipment and all.

TN: Talk to me about how that all started? Setting up equipment?

• You found this farm run down and you decided you were going to do this? How did you actually do it?

RM: It was very challenging. When I finished school, I went to the UK to study a Bachelor’s Degree in Agriculture, and I came back enthusiastic and I thought it would be very easy, but it was very difficult because I remember when I moved to the farm we actually had not built a house yet so I renovated a chalet that was on the farm and I decided to live there.

I remember we didn’t even have water or access to electricity.

There was this tree that was on top of the thatch because it was a thatched round house that used to have these worms that would get into my house and bite me.

So, it was very uncomfortable to be honest. My decision to move to the farm especially coming from the UK.

Also, just trying to acquire equipment. With farming if you do not have the correct equipment it is difficult.

I remember when I was growing snap peas for export, in one of my first commercial projects, in the morning we woke up at 4am and we tried to do land preparations with the handles, it was so difficult.

Sometimes just trying to hire a tractor in the area you find that most people will be busy, people will do their land prep first and then they can hire out their equipment so it was really challenging the first few years, very challenging just trying to get the finance from the banks and sometimes you would get negative feedback because they would just ask how old I was and I was 25 years old then, and they would say I was a very young woman.

Certain comments I think that even men would not have been even asked.

Just trying to even convince out-growers; they would be in doubt because I guess the industry is used to males as it is a male dominated industry so men are what they are normally used to, so when a woman comes and starts looking for capital or starts looking for a contract and things like that, it can be difficult and people need to change the way they think.

TN: So you had things said to you as you were looking for finances which would not be ordinarily said to men, such as?

RM: Trevor, when I started people used to ask me questions that I felt  they did not ask men.

Questions like, I remember when I had an organisation came to the farm, and then they were asking me all these questions on sustainable farming.

The interview was going well and then they said to me at the end, what about if I got married, did I think it would affect my participation on the farm?

So I just thought to myself I wonder if men get asked, you know, such questions.

TN: Wow.

RM: Yes. So, I think it is just sort of like a stereotype people have. The idea that the ability of a woman to perform on a farm is different from a man, or to service her loans or things like that. which, some research actually shows that women actually pay back loans better than men.

TN: What other push back do you come across pertaining to the fact that you are a young woman into farming?

• What other push backs have you experienced?

RM: Well I have experienced quite a lot, especially in the beginning.

Now I feel that people have seen me farm and 10 years of farming they have realised that I am really serious about this.

Some of the push- backs I got, I remember when I wanted to grow snap peas and one of the gentlemen in the community said to me those crops are not for women, women should grow things that are simpler and easier.

I also got an opportunity to travel a lot, fortunate enough because I was a member of a farmers’ organisation in Zimbabwe that really encourages young people and women.

I would travel and so I went to the Seychelles in 2015 and I remember it was a policy meeting on climate change.

Something I noticed was that it was only men talking, it was a conference on climate change and women, a topic on how to encourage more women and how to ensure that we are farming even with climate change.

The conference only had male facilitators, male moderators, male speakers and they were talking about women.

So it is interesting how the world is in terms of viewing women.

I think that most people view women’s participation as a primary level as if we are the ones who are working in the back.

If you go to a lot of big commercial farms you will find the women are the ones working, grading the peas or whatever produce they have on the farm, working on the ground doing the intensive work, but very few are owners of the farm business or influencing policy or speaking on panels even if it affects women.

So it is the way farming is, not only on Zimbabwe but internationally.

A lot of people have seen this as a challenge and wanted to encourage more women to be on these platforms and share more.

TN: Sorry to jump in here.

• What does it do to you when somebody asks you that question towards the end of an interview, is getting married not going to mess you up?
• And all this negativity that you experience? What does that do to you?

RM: You know it makes me realise just how far we are from development, because I always say women participation is very important because if we are looking at Zimbabwe reaching a middle-income economy, we are looking at improving the food sector, we need both players.

This is the men and women participating actively in the sector.

So it makes me realise how far sometimes we are, even internationally on achieving those sort of goals.

Also, how people view other people’s ability.

For me, I am fortunate because my parents never put any restriction on me, even up to now they are continuously encouraging me to think bigger, to do more because it is important for us people who are in the food industry to really take it seriously and look in-depth because we need to ensure that we feed people at an affordable price.

We need to ensure that we do not have hungry people and people are growing good quality crops.

Then I think of other women who do not have the same empowerment as I have, and it breaks my heart because in the rural areas the women I am working with there, do not have the same background, who do not have parents who encouraged them like me, and maybe they will shy away from achieving their potential because of the situations around us.

TN: Let us drill down into your farming activity.

• How big is the farm in the first instance? What crops are you into? What farming activities are you engaged in at Chomwedzi Farm in Marondera?

RM: We are on about 400-hectare land. It is a commercial farm.

We have trees, 100 hectares of eucalyptus trees.

We are working in partnership with an organisation here in Zimbabwe to address challenges of deforestation.

In Zimbabwe we have lost a lot of woodland through cooking and curing of our tobacco crop which is a big export crop in Zimbabwe, so we have lost a lot of woodland.

It is important for us to grow trees to reforest our country as well as to provide an alternative for cutting the Musasa trees, which are very special.

So we need to preserve them and provide an alternative for farmers to use when they are curing tobacco.

We have a plantation, it is about nine years old now.

We are also growing commercial maize, we are doing seed potatoes and commercial potatoes.

I have a small dairy there as well and we have a solar plant of about 220 panels.

We are really big on making sure we are sustainable in many ways by planting trees, using renewable energy as a power source, looking at other methods we can farm better without damaging our soils.

So those are the main crops we are growing on the farm.

• “In Conversation With Trevor” is a weekly show broadcast on YouTube.com//InConversationWithTrevor. Please get your free YouTube subscription to this channel. The conversations are sponsored by Nyaradzo Group.

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