Overview

Comparing the Zimbabwean and Japanese agrarian experience may sound impossible. Still, the similarities in the socio-economic and political realities of their respective radical land reforms and grain policies provide scope for such an endeavour. This book examines the aftermath of Japan's radical land reform and the development of her cooperatives. It then compares it to the nature and character of the Zimbabwe post-land reform agrarian structure. The author collected and analysed data from three villages in Japan, and three in Zimbabwe to understand different types of cooperatives, their growths, and constraints. Three distinct types of cooperatives emerged from Japan's 70-year experience in cooperative development. One of these three was identified as providing more relevant lessons necessary for restructuring the British-Indian type of cooperatives currently obtaining in Zimbabwe. The central argument is that the radical Fast-Track Land Reform Programme provided a rare platform (as it did in Japan) to develop robust, genuine grassroots cooperatives from below. Based on a global political economy reading of agricultural production, the book sieves the pros and cons of the Japanese agricultural cooperative system with knowledge systems from the Zimbabwe movement to advance a new agricultural cooperative development framework for Zimbabwe and other post-colonial states.

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9789956551910

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Rangarirai Gavin Muchetu is a Political Economist who specialises in rural and agricultural development. He obtained his PhD in Global Society Studies from Doshisha University of Kyoto, Japan. He is currently studying farmer cooperatives in Shiga Prefecture (Gamou district), Japan, as a post-doctoral fellow. His thesis focused on issues faced by agrarian societies after radical land reforms. Particular interest was placed on the forms and character of the collective-action mechanisms utilised to combat post-reform market contradictions. As the realities of unavoidable land reforms settle in Southern Africa, it becomes vital to explore such debates in order to proffer lasting solutions.

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