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Agricultural pursuits employ the majority of the country’slabour force. Zambia has a vast land and natural resource base, although only about one-sixth of the country’s arable land is under cultivation. Farms range in size from household farms to large commercial farms. Smallholder farmers use hand hoes and few external inputs, and they mainly produce food crops such as corn (maize), sorghum, millet, cassava (manioc), and groundnuts (peanuts). Much of Zambia’s cotton, which is used for the local textile industry as well as for export, is also grown by smallholders. Medium and large commercial farms benefit from improved seed, fertilizer, and animal draft power. The country’s large-scale commercial farms are mainly located along the Line of Rail and are predominately owned and operated by European settlers and their descendants, a pattern that dates back to colonial days when African males were recruited to work the copper mines while European settlers were brought in to work the fields. The settlers were given fertile land along the Line of Rail while Africans were resettled in less fertile areas, a situation that has changed to some degree because of land reform programs.

Corn is a staple food crop and accounts for the largest proportion of planted area on Zambian farms. The country’s high rate of urbanization during much of the post-independence era has increased the national demand for corn, the production of which has fluctuated and grown at a slower pace relative to demand. For many years the growth of corn was promoted by the use of hybrid varieties and subsidized fertilizers. It began to displace staples such as cassava, sorghum, and millet in areas not naturally suited to it, such as the higher-precipitation areas of the north. The removal of fertilizer subsidies reversed that trend; in the north, cassava, the traditional staple, is regaining importance. Zambia’s poor roadinfrastructure makes it difficult for rural farmers to help supply the needs of the urban population. At times, domestic corn has rotted in the rural areas even as it was being imported from other countries. Levels of commercialization are relatively low, and near-subsistence farming is widespread.

On the poorer soils of the wetter north and northeast, cultivation is mainly of a shifting variety called chitemene, whereby trees (or their branches) are cut and then piled in the centre of the clearing for burning, the crop being planted in the ashes. Expanded rural populations, however, growing because of improved health care and nutrition, have in turn led farmers to let their fields lie fallow for a shorter period of time before recultivation, and thus the effectiveness of thechitemene system has suffered. As a result, there has been a resurgence of the practice of mound cultivation. A heap of grasses and other vegetation is covered in soil to form a mound that measures approximately 3 feet (1 metre) in diameter by 3 feet in height; fertile soil is produced by the decay of the vegetation within the mound, which is later flattened and the enriched soil spread among important crops. Over much of the rest of the country, semipermanent hoe cultivation predominates; in swamp and lakeshore areas, it is combined with fishing.

Irrigated agriculture is increasingly important. Started in 1966, the first successful scheme was at Nakambala, on the south side of the Kafue Flats, where the Zambia Sugar Company has more than 25,000 acres (101,000 hectares) under sugarcane. Their refinery also serves nearby smallholder cane-growing projects. Zambia provides for its own needs and exports sugar. At Mpongwe, south of Luanshya, a major irrigation scheme produces wheat and coffee. Kasama in the northeast is the location of two arabica coffee schemes, and there is a tea estate at Kawambwa in the far north. Wheat and cotton are grown at Sinazongwe and Sinazeze in the Gwembe (middle Zambezi) valley, using water from Lake Kariba. Cotton cultivation was encouraged by the construction of textile mills, first at Kafue and later at Kabwe.

Soil erosion is a perennialconcern in the heavily settled areas of the south and east, while the middle Zambezi valley and the southwest are the worst affected in drought years.

Cattle are found only in the drier, tsetse-free parts of the country with open woodland vegetation: mainly the Tongaplateau, the Kafue Flats, and thefloodplain of the upper Zambezi (tsetse flies are prevalent along much of the middle Zambezi). Cattle that form part of traditional farming systems often do not enter the commercial market, which is supplied mainly by larger herds kept on commercial farms, especially near Lusaka and in the south.