This policy brief highlights some of the key trends in Zambia agricultural production since the implementation of partial agricultural reform.food security, food policy, Zambia, agricultural production, Farm Management, Q18,

Jayne, Thomas S.

Negassa, Asfaw

Nijhoff, Jan J.

Zulu, Ballard

English

Research Papers in Economics

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FOOD  SECURITY  RESEARCH  PROJECT  ZAMBIA
No. 2                (Downloadable at:  http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/zambia/index.htm)          January 2001
IS THE GLASS HALF-EMPTY OR HALF FULL?
AN ANALYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION TRENDS IN ZAMBIA
Ballard Zulu, J.J. Nijhoff, T.S. Jayne, and Asfaw Negassa
BACKGROUND: Zambia has implemented
major reforms to its agricultural sector since the
early 1990s. The effects of these reforms have
been the subject of considerable speculation in
Zambia.  The conventional tone in the local
press and the general public is that the sector is
in decline.  However, this notion has rarely been
evaluated through comprehensive empirical
analyses and is often simply asserted on the
basis of anecdotal or partial evidence.
In response to these information gaps on basic
trends in Zambian agriculture, the Agricultural
Consultative Forum and the Ministry of
Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (MAFF),
convened a Workshop on Developments in the
Agricultural Sector, held on June 28, 2000 in
Lusaka.  During the workshop it became
apparent that the agricultural sector has made
considerable strides that have been largely
underappreciated given the tone of policy
discussions in the country.  However, it was also
argued that, despite the progress made, the
benefits may not have been broadly shared as
yet.  Some government officials have questioned
whether many smallholders in the more remote
areas of the country have benefitted from the
reforms. This raises key issues about the costs
and benefits of alternative policy options and
investment strategies to improve smallholder
welfare in these areas.
OBJECTIVES:  This policy brief highlights
some of the key trends in Zambia agricultural
production since the implementation of partial
agricultural reform.  Readers interested in the
detailed findings, including provincial-level
analyses, are referred to the full working paper
1
from which these highlights are drawn.
Apart from the 1990 agricultural census,
agricultural statistics in Zambia are derived
from the Post Harvest Survey (PHS, small and
medium scale farmers) and Crop Forecasting
Survey (CFS, includes large scale farmers).
Both surveys are carried out by the Central
Statistics Office commissioned by MAFF.
These two surveys form the basis of the
analyses in the main report.
TRENDS IN VALUE OF PRODUCTION:
Figure 1 shows the value of agriculture
production of 13 food and cash crops from
1980 to 1999. The solid line represents the real
value of production using CFS production data
and the broken line is derived from CFS plus
PHS production data for cassava and sweet
potato (which are excluded from the CFS
survey).  Values are based on average price
levels for each crop over the 1993-1998 period
applied to production levels over the entire 20-
year period.
The data suggest that the mean value of crop
production displays a fairly constant long-term
trend) albeit with substantial  fluctuation from
1 Is the Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty? An
Analysis of Agricultural Production Trends in
Zambia,   Working Paper No. 3.  Food Security
Research Project, Lusaka, Zambia.  Downloadable at: 
http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/zambia/index.htm FSRP POLICY SYNTHESIS  No. 2
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200000
400000
600000
800000
1000000
80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 00
Crop Forecast Crop Forecast + cass/sw. pot.
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9
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Figure 1. Value of Zambia Crop Production, CFS
one year to the next.  If one adds sweet
potatoes and cassava production to the picture,
the trend tilts slightly upwards after 1991
(broken line).  If PHS-derived trends are used,
the data suggest that the national value of
small-holder crop production shows no clearly
discernable rise or fall during the mid to late
1990s.
Crop Diversification Evident: When these
trends are disaggregated by crop, major shifts
in crop production become apparent. At
national level, maize’s share of crop production
is clearly declining, especially in the more
remote areas where smallholders have returned
to more traditional diversified cropping and
consumption patterns which were in place
before large public expenditures were
introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to support
smallholder maize production.  According to
the Crop Forecast Survey data, maize area has
decreased by 165,007 hectares from 1990 to
1999, a 22% decline.  Soyabeans and sunflower
areas have decreased by 18,100 (a 60%
decline) and 30,933 hectares (a 70% decline)
respectively.  These crops have been partially
substituted by a 55,000 hectare increase in
cotton area since 1990 (+65%); a 40,000
hectare rise in groundnut area (76% increase),
a 130,000 hectare increase in cassava area (65%
increase), and an increase in sweet potatoes by
7,000 hectares (54 % increase). 
In the 1980s, maize accounted for roughly 70%
of total cropped area.  In the past five years, this
share has declined to about 55%.  The largest
decline in maize area has been in Northern
Province, which has simultaneously
experienced a large increase in cassava
production. 
The shift from maize to other food crops is also
evident from Figure 2 which depicts the
proportionate contribution of the various food
crop categories to total food crop production by
smallholders expressed in energy terms per
rural capita.
Strong Relationship Between Production and
Rainfall: The value of agriculture production in
the   post  1991 era  was prone  to fluctuationsFSRP POLICY SYNTHESIS  No. 2
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0%
25%
50%
75%
100%
1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99
Oil seeds
Legumes
Tubers
Other grains
Maize
Figure 2.  Proportionate Production of Smallholder Food Crops (kCal/rural cap)
largely due to extreme weather conditions
(rainfall). There was a country-wide drought in
1992, a partial drought in 1995, and the El Niño
phenomenon in 1998. Policy environment
notwithstanding, rainfall is a crucial factor in
crop performance especially since the country’s
agricultural production system’s water
requirements are largely rain-fed.
Agricultural Subsidies Declined, Production
Not So: The value of agricultural production in
constant 1998 kwacha terms has remained
stable despite substantial reductions in
government subsidies to the maize sub-sector
since the 1980s. Figure 3 shows the value of
production (solid line) and government
subsidies to maize and fertilizer (broken line).
Maize and fertilizer subsidies reached their
peak in the late 1980s and have declined
substantially since 1992.  The value of crop
production has remained basically constant
despite a reduction in government subsidies to
agriculture.
Highlights of Provincial Production Value
Trends: Using PHS data, the provinces with the
highest growth rates are the provinces where
cassava is the main food crop, i.e., Luapula
(7.8%) and Northern (5.8%). In these provinces
crop diversification has been mainly from
maize to cassava. The urbanized provinces of
Copperbelt and Lusaka have demonstrated
stable or increasing output of maize, a
commodity that is intensively consumed in
these two provinces. This suggests that
liberalization is encouraging the growth of this
high-bulk, low-value crop closer to its primary
consumption areas. Eastern and Southern
provinces have displayed roughly 2% annual
growth in crop output.  The provinces with the
lowest  growth  rates are  Western (0), Central
(-2.2%) and Northwestern (-6.2%). According
to the data, these provinces show little
diversification or increased intensification of
any major crop, particularly cash crops.
TRENDS IN PRODUCTION OF ENERGY
BY SMALLHOLDERS: Using PHS
production data for maize, other grains, tubers,
legumes and oilseeds (1993/94 through
1997/98) and CFS data (1998/99), caloric
values have been computed and expressed as
energy available in rural areas on a per capita
basis.
Energy Production Trend From Smallholder
Food Production at National Level
Increasing?:  At the national level, rural per
capita energy from food crops produced by
smallholders appears to be stable, and may
even exhibit a moderately increasing trend.
However, because a proportion of foodFSRP POLICY SYNTHESIS  No. 2
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400000
600000
800000
1000000
1200000
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98
Crop Production Maize and fertilizer subsidies
m
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(
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)
m
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(
s
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i
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s
)
Figure 3. Crop Production Value and Government Subsidies to Maize and Fertilizer
produced is marketed and not necessarily
retained within the rural areas, it is difficult to
draw any further conclusions as to the actual
utilization of the available energy by rural
versus urban consumers.
Apart from the stable or increasing trend in
food production, increased smallholder cash
crop production, especially in Eastern and
Southern Province, has augmented the
purchasing power of many rural households in
these areas. For example, the value of seed
cotton and burley tobacco produced by
smallholders has more than tripled during
recent years.
DIFFERENCES IN LAND AREA AND
PRODUCTION AMONG SMALL-
HOLDERS: Having identified national and
provincial crop production trends, we then used
data from the most recent PHS survey available
(1997/98) to analyze household-level
differences in the contribution of small and
medium scale farmers  to agricultural
production. Below, the distribution of land
(area cultivated) and crop income are indicated
by quartile (quartiles were established by
ranking small and medium scale producers by
area  cultivated  per   household   (hh) and per
person (cap), and subsequently dividing the
sample thus obtained into four equal groups).
Land Land  Crop Income 
(ha/hh) (ha/cap) (ZK/cap)
1
st Quartile 0.39 0.07 14,773
2
nd Quartile 0.82 0.14 23,630
3
rd Quartile 1.31 0.22 37,720
4
th Quartile 2.95 0.53 60,226
High Variability in Area Cultivated Among
Smallholders: In every province, the top 25%
of small and medium scale farmers cultivate at
least six times more land per capita than the
bottom 25% of farmers.  These findings do not
include the large-scale commercial sector.  If
large-scale farmers were included, the
skewness of land cultivation would obviously
be even greater.
The finding of large variations across
households in the amount of land cultivated per
capita equally holds when the analysis is done
at the district level.  This shows that the results
are not due to differences in population density
across provinces, but hold even at a relatively
small geographic level of analysis.  There are
obvious reasons why land cultivated at the
household level may vary from one household
to the next (e.g., differences in family size,
access to animal traction, the stage in theFSRP POLICY SYNTHESIS  No. 2
Page 5
household life cycle, land quality), but
preliminary ANOVA analysis indicates that
these factors explain only a small portion of the
total variation in household crop area, and that
there may be important differences in
smallholders’ relative access to land, which
subsequently influence poverty and
vulnerability to food insecurity.  This is a
subject of on-going research.
High Variability in Value of Production
Among Smallholders: The value of crop
production at the household level varies closely
with the amount of land cultivated per capita.
The fact that there is a strong link between area
cultivated and crop output is not surprising.
However, what may be surprising is the degree
to which crop production varies among small
and medium scale farmers.  In Central, Eastern,
and Southern Provinces, for example, the value
of crop output per capita produced by the top
25% of farmers (ranked by land quartile) is
eight to ten times higher than the value of crop
output per capita produced by the bottom 25%
of farmers. This large variation in crop income
between the top and bottom land cultivation
groups holds across every province in the
country.
These results indicate that the value of crop
production is highly related to the distribution
of cropped area, i.e., the skewness of land
allocation is driving the skewness of income
derived from crop production.  While data on
household non-farm income are not contained
in the CFS or PHS surveys, and such
information must be obtained to make any firm
conclusions, these findings begin to suggest
that limited access to crop land at the household
level may be a key factor associated with rural
poverty.  As the variation in land cultivated per
capita holds even at the district level, as does
the relationship between crop income and land
cultivated, this raises the question as to whether
the determinants of rural poverty are perhaps a
household-level phenomenon as much or more
than a geographic one.  This is the topic of
ongoing research.
Distribution of Smallholder Production
Uneven: 80% of all households produced about
40% of the value of the national crop output.
This means that about 60% of the value of crop
output is produced by only 20% of farming
households (Figure 4). This could imply that
many of the benefits of liberalization of the
agricultural sector could be accruing to only a
relatively small proportion of farming
households.
POSSIBLE POLICY IMPLICATIONS: The
findings of this study, based on assessments of
trends for 15 crops in Zambia, demonstrate that
erroneous conclusions about agricultural sector
performance can be drawn by focusing on
trends in one crop – maize.   While the
agricultural reform policies in Zambia have
been only partially implemented so far, they
have changed the composition of crop
production, creating a largely underappreciated
growth in smallholder crops such as sweet
potato, cassava, cotton, groundnuts, and
tobacco.  As a result, the overall trend in the
value of crop output appears to be steady or
increasing slightly during the 1990s despite the
fact that maize production has clearly declined.
Agricultural policy formation would be well
served to reflect the fact that household food
security is influenced by the performance of a
wider range of commodity supply-chains than
during the control period. The relative
importance of these alternative commodities
varies regionally.
There is an important link between household
crop production and land holding size,
suggesting that programs aimed at increasing
access to land and/or off-farm opportunities for
those households cultivating little area may be
an important element in rural poverty reduction
strategies.  But the growth of off-farm
employment opportunities is dependent on
agricultural growth, which is the main source of
income growth  in  agrarian economies  to fuel
demand for off-farm employment.  These
findings also have implications for land
settlement and spatial rural investment policies,FSRP POLICY SYNTHESIS  No. 2
Page 6
 Figure 4. Concentration of Crop Production in Zambia, 1997/98
issues which are being currently addressed by
government-supported research and policy
initiatives in Zambia.
_________________
The Food Security Research Project is a collaboration between
the Agricultural Consultative Forum, the Ministry of
Agriculture, Food and Fisheries,  Michigan State University’s
Department of Agricultural Economics, and the United States
Agency for International Development in Lusaka.  The Zambia
FSRP field team is comprised of  Jones Govereh, Billy
Mwiinga, Jan Nijhoff, Gelson Tembo, and Ballard Zulu.  MSU-
based researchers in the FSRP are Cynthia Donovan, T.S.
Jayne, David Tschirley, and Michael Weber.
Please direct all inquiries to the In-Country Coordinator, Food
Security Research Project, 86 Provident Street, Fairview,
Lusaka; tel: 234 539; fax: 234 559; e-mail: fsrp1@msu.edu.

Is the Glass Half-empty or Half Full? An Analysis of Agricultural Production Trends in Zambia

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