Agriculture in Zambia

Agriculture is said to be the main source of livelihood for the majority of Zambians. However, what is not clear is weather people are in it by choice or due to lack of alternatives. The answer to this question will determine whether agriculture could be used as a vehicle to get people out of poverty. Those that are in it by choice should be able to graduate from being a small scale farmer to an ermergent farmer i.e semi commercial and eventually a full time commercial farmer.

 This would be the ideal setting. But the reality on the ground is that a small scale farmer in many instances, operates in a challenging environment. To start with the land on which she/he farms is not his/hers. It is common knowledge that traditional land is under customary land. For this reason farmers do not have title to the land. This limits them from accessing finance as they do not have anything to offer as collateral. The second issue is to do with lack of infrastructure which limits farmers from accessing both input and output markets. Having said this, the main issue that now needs to be discussed is whether agriculture can be used as a vehicle to get farmers/ rural poor to get out of poverty. This will be discussed in my next article.