Zimbabwe's total land area is about 39 million ha. Of this, there are about 32.6 million ha of agricultural land. National parks, wildlife areas, forests and urban settlements occupy the remaining 6.4 million ha. Agriculture has been and remains a prime contributor to the economy. It contributes 18 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and provides 45 percent of the exports, 60 percent of all raw materials for industry, and employment for some 70 percent of the population.
Until 2000, there were two dominant farming subsectors: large-scale farming, and smallholder farming. The large-scale farming subsector had about 4 500 farmers, with freehold title. The smallholder farming subsector consisted of about 1 500 000 farming households on communal lands, and 45 000 in resettlement areas and small-scale commercial farming households. In 2000, the Government embarked on a land and agrarian land reform programme that redistributed land from white large-scale farmers to black farmers in order to redress a historical and political imbalance in land distribution. The land redistribution process resulted in the creation of 140 135 farming units covering almost 6.3 million ha.
Zimbabwe has a growing need for fertilizers in order to increase land and labour productivity and to intensify production, especially in the smallholder farming subsector.
Increases in crop production in the past two decades have been more the result of an expansion in area rather than an increase in land and labour productivity. Crop yields in the smallholder subsector have remained low compared with similar crops in the large-scale farming subsector. Fertilizer use is falling owing to unavailability, increased prices and financial constraints. Inadequate investment in soil fertility is leading to degradation of land currently in agricultural use.
Zimbabwe has a well-developed fertilizer industry. Until 1990, the country was self-sufficient in most of its fertilizer requirements. However, unfavourable macroeconomic factors have undermined the performance of the industry, and the fertilizer manufacturers have been operating below capacity since the late 1990s. The country has become a net importer of certain fertilizers. However, studies by FAO and the African Centre for Fertilizer Development (ACFD) in 1999 showed that, if limitations such as credit availability for farmers were eliminated, demand would outstrip local production even if the maximum fertilizer production levels were reached.
