Economics of On-farm Production of Indigenous Fruits - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 242

resettlement area in Zimbabwe provided data on labour, cash and in-kind
income, and expenditure of all income-generating activities. Ward 16,
Murehwa District, is a communal area with a high abundance of IFTs
throughout the area, whereas Takawira is a resettlement area, where
households settled in 1982/1983. Households of the communal areas settled
much earlier, i.e. between 1940 and 1960. In both areas, land is owned by the
State and rights of use are granted to the people living there. In the communal
areas, land can be subdivided and bequeathed to children, but this is not the
case in the resettlement areas. Traditional leaders in the communal areas deal
with conflicts in resource ownership and use, whereas elected committees take
care of such issues in the resettlement areas (Rukuni et al. , 1994).
Indigenous fruit tree abundance in Takawira is more patchy, and this area is
not as well integrated with the market as Murehwa, which is shown by less
frequent buses to Harare. The households to be monitored were selected from a
baseline survey sample. Fifty per cent of the households were located in two
villages in the vicinity of the market and the remainder were located in two villages
further from the market (five households per village). The households were
selected based on their interest in IFT issues, use of the trees, and willingness to
participate in the monitoring (purposive sampling). Additionally, a socio-economic
survey of 303 households sampled randomly from both areas provided
information on factors related to indigenous fruit use and planting. Mithöfer and
Waibel (2003) described the surveys and survey findings in more detail.
Supplementary information was collected in farmer workshops on the age-yield
function of U. kirkiana and by an e-mail survey amongst IFT experts of the region.
13.4.2 Data analyses
Exploratory data analyses
Indigenous fruits contribute about 6.4% and 5.5% of cash and in-kind income
of households living in Murehwa district and Takawira resettlement area,
respectively (Mithöfer and Waibel, 2003). However, income from the different
fruit tree species varies, as production is seasonal, covering the period from
August to January. The role which indigenous fruits play in sustaining food
security differs between the two areas. In Murehwa, rural households rely less
on the fruits than in Takawira after a failure of the maize harvest. Differences
exist between indigenous fruit tree species in terms of value; for example, U.
kirkiana is valued for the commercialization potential of its fruits (Rukuni et al. ,
1998), whereas P. curatellifolia is valued as a food source for survival (Nyoka
and Rukuni, 2000) and is more frequently used to substitute for the staple
maize than U. kirkiana and S. cocculoides after a failure of the maize harvest
(Mithöfer and Waibel, 2003).
Although households show strong preferences for indigenous fruits, and
these fruits are widely consumed (see Ramadhani and Schmidt, Chapter 12,
this volume), few of the rural households have planted the trees. The socio-
economic survey showed, for both locations, that a high share of households
had planted EFTs, whereas they only rarely planted IFTs (Table 13.1), which