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Why such a large supply of arable land has not been brought under cultivation, despite Zambia
having one of the highest rates of urbanization in Africa, is fundamental to assessing the potential
expansion of crop and livestock agriculture. A number of factors have had an important influence.
First, the British colonial policy of forced resettlement of the "African" population into the reserves,
and later forced labor for the mines, combined to uproot the vast majority of the rural "African"
population. Second, once uprooted, the vitality of the copper industry until the late 1970s helped to
pull labor into urban employment and keep people in the cities. Third, the urban bias in agricultural
policies, which subsidized consumers and implicitly taxed producers until the late 1980s, provided
further disincentives to farming or returning to rural life. Finally, for much of the urban population,
one or two generations removed from their rural roots, the lack of physical infrastructure (roads,
hospitals, schools, comparable housing) and utilities in rural areas would now mean a high social cost
in moving.
The culmination of these historical processes is a highly urbanized population—one of the
highest in Africa. The urban population was estimated at 3.284 million in 1990, or 42 percent of the
total population of 7.818 million. With population growing at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in urban
areas and 2.9 percent in rural areas, the total population is projected to reach 10,816,440 by the year
2000, with the urban population increasing to 44 percent of the total (Ministry of Agriculture 1993,
p. 9).
Zambia's economy has undergone a transition since independence. The mining sector as a
percentage of GDP has declined from 41 percent in 1965 to 8 percent in 1991. Over the same period,
the share of the agricultural sector remained fairly constant at around 15 percent but has increased
slightly to about 18 percent in recent years (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries 1993). With
a decline in the copper industry, an abundance of arable land, and recently implemented marketing
and price reforms that have begun to reverse the former urban bias in agricultural pricing policy in
favor of rural producers, agriculture is positioned to become the engine of growth for future output
expansion.
Despite what would appear to be a rather immobile urban population, Zambia's area of crop
land, according to one source, has witnessed an extremely high rate of expansion since the 1970s.
Data compiled by the World Bank from 1974 to 1990 (table 1.7) show an extremely high rate of
growth in agricultural production, but mostly from opening new lands. The World Bank report does
not provide statistics for total cropped area. However, the rates of growth for maize (10.0 percent),
sorghum (19.4 percent), millet (14.9 percent), and groundnuts (23.7 percent) (these being the most
important crops cultivated, table 1.8) provide a good indication of the rate by which new arable land
is being brought into cultivation. After weighting these percentages by crop areas in table 1.8
(1986-87 figures), the calculation shows that crop area is expanding at an average rate of 12.5 percent
per annum, resulting in a doubling of crop area every 6 years.
Independent estimates of growth rates calculated in chapter 7 show far more modest rates of
growth. The growth rate analysis suggests that total crop area in the commercial sector declined at an
average annual rate of 0.6 percent for the period 1975 to 1989, while maize area declined 4.1 percent
annually on average. Maize production declined between 3 and 7 percent per annum depending on the
farm size category studied. (Dramatically higher rates are observed among small farms in the
northwest region, but the base of cultivated area is relatively small). Published estimates of area and