The name is absent

to about 120,000 in 1990 (World Bank 1993a, p. 40). However, while the group of "emergent"
commercial farmers, who rely on oxen plows, improved seeds, and fertilizers to produce a large
marketed surplus, is substantial (21 percent of total farming units) and growing, smallholder
agricultural production, which is dependent on simple hand tools and subsistence farming, still
accounts for 73 percent of all farming units. Most large-scale farms (97 percent), and to a lesser extent
medium-scale farms (75 percent) and "emergent" farms (66 percent), tend to be concentrated along
the rail line and major road arteries in the Southern, Central, Lusaka, and Copperbelt provinces. Only
14 percent of smallholder households are located in these provinces; the majority reside in Northern
(29 percent), Western (22 percent), Luapula (19 percent), and North-Western (14 percent) provinces
that are less well connected to urban and market centers and where the marketing and physical
infrastructure remain less developed.

Converting "smallholder" households into "emergent" commercial farmers is of strategic
importance. While in the past, commercial farms produced sufficient marketed surplus for the urban
population, shortfalls in maize and food riots in the 1980s have underscored the need for more
broad-based agricultural development. However, such conversion of smallholders into an "emergent"
class of commercial farmers will require substantial public investments in rural infrastructure to enable
their integration into the marketplace.

IV. Arable land and crop expansion

Of Zambia's roughly 75 million hectares (table 1.2), approximately 16 million hectares are
considered suitable for rough livestock grazing, and 9 million hectares are considered to be arable land
with good potential for crop cultivation (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries 1993). Only 1.3
million hectares are currently under crop cultivation, or roughly 14 percent of the nation's arable land.
Almost all of Zambia's highest-quality arable land (about 1.4 million hectares) is currently
concentrated in already densely-populated areas and generally in the state sector (World Bank 1993a).

Table 1.3: Leases of State Land by type of lessee, late 1970s

Source: Bruce and Dorner, Agricultural Land Tenure in Zambia: Perspectives, Problems and Opportunities,
LTC Research Paper no. 76 (Madison: Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin, 1982), p. 11.

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