The name is absent

82

Table 3.2: Percentage of total farm unit cultivated, 1987-88

a. For the commercial farms, Copperbelt province figures include all other provinces except for those separately
listed. This is the case for every year except 1990.

Source: Commercial Farm Series Data, 1987-88.

Rates of utilization in the MAFF survey are much higher at 75.7 percent nationwide, but range
from a low of 48.0 percent in North-Western province to a high of 87.1 percent in Eastern province.
Allowing for grazing uses and land left idle for waste, site of homestead, natural forest, and public
infrastructure, these figures suggest a fairly high rate of utilization by small farms which dominate the
MAFF sampling frame. But conclusions hinge on the definition of "reported arable land," for which
data provided by respondents are guesses, not estimates taken from area surveys. Furthermore, farms
that are completely underutilized, as indicated in chapter 1, may very well be due to absentee
landlords who are impossible to locate at the time of the survey.

The extent of farm utilization is also linked with farm size, as indicated in table 3.3. Land
utilization in the smallest farm size category (0-79 hectares) is 35.1 percent of the total farming area.
Rates of land utilization decline with further increases in farm size: 20.5 percent for the 80-199
hectare category, 8.1 percent in the 200-399 hectare category, 14.4 percent in the 400-799 hectare
category, 12.3 percent in the 800-1,999 hectare category, and 8.8 percent on farms 2,000 hectares
and above.

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