Zambia: encouraging sustainable smallholder agriculture

Main purpose of this report is to present a balanced assessment of prospects for sustainable growth in smallholder agriculture in Zambia in the light of recent reforms. Given their historical underdevelopment in Zambia, and policy emphasis on the interface between state and market, the report also focuses particularly on the role of NGOs. Considers:<B>Creating an enabling environment</B> an overview of agricultural policy and performance during the period of the second republic (1974-91), and then during the first term of the MMD Government (1991-96). Overall agricultural growth if anything stagnated during the second period, but this can be attributed to variation in drought and disease incidence as well as to the dislocating effects of liberalisation. Prospects for a future upturn in agricultural growth depend not only upon private sector response, but also upon the extent to which improved price incentives are complemented by effective public investment under the Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (ASIP). The breadth of participation in the benefits of any such upturn (particularly among women and children) also depends upon the institutional landscape through which smallholders engage with expanding markets.<B>Promoting resource conserving technology: </B> moves from a consideration of market opportunities and constraints to the scope for improved productivity in response both to reduced access to external inputs and the availability of livestock. It is focused less on available technology options, than upon public and private organisational capacity to promote agricultural technology development, particularly to suit the needs of smallholders living in remote, diverse and risky areas. During the 1980s, the Adaptive Research Planning Team (ARPT) within the Ministry of Agriculture acquired an international reputation for its work in this area, but financial support for its work (given its low commercial and budgetary returns) has faltered. With public research increasingly oriented towards more financially sustainable activities, such work has been left increasingly to NGOs. However, their technical capacity and outreach is still very limited. Research controlled by farmer associations is also limited in its relevance to small-scale farmers, the Conservation Farming Unit of the Zambia National Farmers’ Union being a relatively new and interesting exception.<B>Supporting community level organisations: </B> focuses on the scope for community level organisation among smallholders, both to strengthen their interaction with markets and Government agencies, and to facilitate local experimentation and natural resource management. A series of different NGO intervention models are described and compared. It concludes that while progress is being made in developing alternative models that are supportive of sustainable agriculture, more systematic action research is needed into the cost-effectiveness of the different models, and their potential for wider replication.Concludes that the complexity of the evolving institutional landscape, as determined by the organisational and financial viability in different contexts of an array of alternative institutions (private traders, outgrower schemes, farmers’ clubs etc) linking producers to commercial markets. Changes in this institutional landscape will in turn have an important influence over which farmers gain and which lose from accelerated growth, stimulated by market liberalisation. For growth to be more inclusive (and labour intensive), the report emphasises the scope for an increase in the scale and quality of NGO (private non-profit) intervention to promote viable agro-services for smallholders who fall beyond the frontier of current commercial (private for-profit) activity. [author]The <A HREF="http://www.eldis.org/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpcgi.exe?QB0=AND&QF0=de@DOCNO&QI0=asr&MR=20&TN=a1&DF=f1&RF=s1&DL=0&RL=0&NP=3&MF=eldismsg.ini&AC=QBE_QUERY&XC=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpcgi.exe&BU=http%3A//www.eldis.org/search.htm">full text of the six country reports is also available online </A>