Betting the Farms.(Brief Article)

This seed corn is tall and lush, growing under irrigation. The soybeans flourish in the care of diligent field hands. More than 150 head of fat brown steers fill a pen, and the newly renovated piggery has grown to 113 sows and seven boars. Surveyors backed by a construction crew hurry to lay more irrigation pipe to stave off the drought that has devastated Zimbabwe's annual harvest.

This is modern farming--and a political statement. Amid the tense uncertainty that settled over Zimbabwe last week after a rigged election returned President Robert Mugabe to power, many white farmers, finally, are calling it quits. But new black entrepreneurs--like the ones who own this 4,000-hectare (10,000-acre) spread--are rushing to make a success of Mugabe's land-grab plans. "The perception outside is that the whites are the ones who make Zimbabwe tick," says Mutumwa Mawere, the politically connected CEO of the trust that purchased this farm and others last year. "We're creating a center of excellence to demonstrate what is possible."

Mugabe's plan is radical. Using sweeping new powers granted by a cowed Parliament, last year he formally seized 80 percent of the white-owned land left in Zimbabwe--some 10 million hectares, or 25 million acres. Experts say his bankrupt government can't possibly afford to back the blacks slated to receive pieces of the expropriated land--and they predict a food crisis in less than three months; the United Nations already has begun emergency feeding programs. But Mugabe, 78, is surrounded by a core of true believers who say such negative talk is based on a colonial myth of white supremacy. The farm invaders who first outraged the world two years ago are Mugabe's shock troops. Their drive to make a go of small-scale farming is crucial to the final battle of the president's political career.

Mugabe insists the new black farmers can perform as well as the outgoing whites. "There is a misperception that white farmers are the only ones who can grow certain crops, and we are going to prove that this is wrong," says Joseph Made, minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement. He says the government spent $2.7 million last year giving new farmers seed, fertilizer and herbicide, and has budgeted $1.9 billion for the forthcoming land-reform program (it compensates whites for the ...