Chilli Farming in Gokwe South: Replacing Cotton Income

When cotton stopped paying, thousands of Gokwe South households lost their only cash crop. This is what replaced it for one of them: 1,000 chilli plants on 504 square metres, returning USD 1,500 against USD 85 of costs in a single season.

This is the story of Wellington Sibanda of Chematendera, Nemangwe, in Gokwe South District.

Background: a district built on cotton

Wellington was born in 1955 in Fort Rixon, in the Makandeni area of Matabeleland South. In 1986 his family resettled in Chematendera, at a time when inward migration to Gokwe South was common because of opportunities in cotton. Cotton was the main cash crop and the livelihood of most farmers in the district — and a major driving force behind its development. Wellington mastered it, alongside maize and groundnuts for subsistence.

Cotton remained viable until around 2006, when international prices began falling. The years that followed brought pricing disputes between farmers and contracting companies, and government interventions did not change the situation.

“Things got worse year after year until we decided to stop growing cotton in 2011. This however meant giving up our sole cash crop, reducing us to mere peasant maize farmers. Our situation was worsened by recurring droughts. We could therefore not rely on maize for our income security, making it difficult to meet our family financial needs such as school fees, clothing and groceries. For us it was double misfortune after losing our bank deposits in 2009 when we changed to United States Dollars.”

What he planted

• 1,000 chilli seedlings from Better Agriculture at USD 0.01 each, planted 6 November 2016
• Area: 504 square metres
• Inputs: 20 kg Compound C, 20 kg Ammonium Nitrate, 20 ml Lambda
• Better Agriculture offers inputs on credit; Wellington chose to self-finance
• Field prepared using Conservation Agriculture methods with his family
• Only hired labour was harvesting — two people, USD 20

The numbers

Costs stayed low because training and extension were absorbed by the buyer as an embedded service, and land preparation was done by the family. For context, farmers in Nemangwe without their own cattle can expect to pay around USD 50 per hectare for ploughing services.

What the income bought

• A 125cc motorbike and a Nissan Liberty vehicle
• A cow, a water pump, and a kitchen unit for his wife
• School fees for his three children, and household needs

Payment came through TextaCash, an electronic system, requiring a trip to the CABS branch at Gokwe Centre. For many farmers in the area it was their first experience of banking; Wellington found the account useful for saving.

A less obvious benefit: farming the slopes

Chematendera is hilly and difficult to till because of steep slopes. Conservation Agriculture enabled Wellington and the wider community to grow crops on ground they could not ordinarily work with cattle, and taught better field management using compost. Those skills were then applied to other crops, with improved results.

An honest note on the ceiling

This is a contracted crop, and the contract has limits. Better Agriculture began operating in Gokwe South in 2014 with a pilot of 10.5 hectares, expanded to 30 hectares in 2015/16, then contracted back to 22 hectares in 2016/17 because of subdued market demand, with surplus stocks keeping it at that level into 2017/18.

The margins here are real, but the number of farmers who can access them at any one time is capped by what the buyer can sell. That is a genuine constraint on scaling, and worth stating plainly rather than leaving implied.

What this story shows

A small, well-matched cash crop with a reliable buyer and embedded technical support can rebuild a household’s finances quickly, even on a plot of a few hundred square metres. Wellington planned to expand threefold to 3,500 plants in the 2017/18 season.

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