PLAAS POLICY BRIEF 50 Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies Refiloe Joala Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences www.plaas.org.za | Email:
[email protected] June 2018 THE RISE OF SOYA IN ZAMBIA AND THE INTEGRATION OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS INTRODUCTION KEY POINTS After six decades of policy experimentation, and efforts to • Increasing levels of private investment promote economic diversification and reduce the country’s over- in Zambia’s maize-dominated reliance on copper mining, Zambia has failed to fully capitalise agricultural systems in the past on the country’s agricultural potential (Neubert et al 2011). decade have resulted in the rise of flex Endowed with agricultural land which accounts for 32% of the crops as shown by the rapid expansion 75 million hectares of total land area, the landlocked country of the cultivation of soybean (locally also boasts abundant water resources and favourable agro- referred to as soya beans). climatic conditions (Zambia Development Agency 2015). While • The promotion of high-input, intensive the significance of smallholder agriculture for food production agriculture is restructuring the and rural livelihoods has been consistently emphasised in agro-food systems on which rural Zambia’s agricultural policies since independence (Eidsvoll 2011, Davies et al 2015), the narrative of resource abundance households depend. in policy thinking has equally maintained an agricultural-growth • The integration of smallholder farmers outlook which gives priority to large-scale commercial farming. into expanding long and short soybean This policy approach, along with global concerns about value chains has led to significant dwindling resources in the face of population growth and a changes in access to and use of land, growing demand for food and energy, has established renewed and decreased crop and food diversity.