85
For many areas of the country, there thus appears to be potential arable land that is not
cropped (although perhaps in cattle) and large potential grazing areas that are not grazed. These low
rates of utilization—despite high rates of urbanization—raise fundamental questions about causes,
whether due to poor management, more lucrative nonfarm opportunities, or lack of marketing
infrastructure, market access, credit, price incentives, or need. In the present system where lease rents
are low (state sector) or nonexistent (customary sector), there is no disincentive to underutilization.
This situation is further exacerbated by resettlement schemes and land allocations on newly opened
lands by government where the landholder bears little or no share of the land cost. The land market
should theoretically act to reallocate underutilized land, but subdivisions and land market controls have
acted to dampen transfers, while there is weak evidence that capacity constraints may be reached in
terms of processing transfer applications within the ministry. In general, it is disturbing that so much
emphasis is being placed on opening new lands and expanding leasehold issuances when high rates
of land underutilization prevail in the state sector.
D. Type of farming unit
Information on crop area, livestock numbers, and rates of change in land use are evaluated
in detail in chapter 7. Data on number of farms by principal type of farming operation in table 3.5
provide a preliminary sense of the importance of various subsections or farm types in the Zambian
agricultural economy. Of the 815,326 total farms reporting nationwide, very few (195,841 or 24.0
percent) rely solely on cropping operations. The majority have mixed cropping and livestock activities
or are engaged in commercial activities: 0.1 percent are strictly livestock operations, 2.1 percent are
poultry farms, 4.6 percent are mixed crop and livestock operations, 40.6 percent are mixed crop and
poultry operations, 22.8 percent are mixed poultry and livestock operations, and 5.8 percent are
nonfarming operations. Theoretically, one would expect poultry operations to be located nearer to
urban centers, and livestock in more extensive rural areas. The evidence in table 3.5 reflects this to
some degree, but generally the various farming enterprises tend to be dispersed among all provinces.
E. Parcel holdings
The previous data on number of farming units disguise the fact that multiple farms or parcels
may be farmed by one operator. A frequency distribution of number of parcels held by farming units
(commercial and noncommercial) in different provinces of the country is reported in table 3.6 for the
period 1987-88 (two-year average). Of the 737,603 crop growing households reporting, 49.5 percent
held one parcel, 24.9 percent two parcels, 13.2 percent three parcels, 6.3 percent four parcels, 2.8
percent five parcels, and 3.2 percent six parcels or more.
The number of parcel holdings appears to be positively associated with population density and
degree of commercialization. In the registered and more peri-urban environments of Copperbelt and
Lusaka provinces, 91.6 percent and 96.2 percent of farming units, respectively, comprised 2 parcels
or less, reflecting the combined effect of higher land prices and mixed agricultural and residential land
uses. Conversely, in the more rural areas of the country, farming units tend to consist of more
holdings: 69.2 percent have two parcels or less in Western province, 61.2 percent Central, 61.0
percent Luapula, and 49.3 percent Northern. A high degree of fragmentation is apparent in the Central
(11.9 percent of farming units with 6+ holdings) and Northern (6.2 percent) provinces. However, the
urban and rural split based on population density is not completely deterministic as three
provinces—Southern province with many large farms in rural areas (88.4 percent), Eastern province