Systemic Agricultural Mismanagement: the 1985 ‘Bumper’ Harvest in Zambia

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Abstract
After years of agricultural production significantly below domestic consumption needs for key commodities, in 1985 Zambia looked forward to a good harvest of maize, the nation's staple. The Minister of Co-operatives, Justin Mukando, said in February that more than eight million bags were anticipated, and the Prime Minister, Kebby S. K. Musokotwane, declared in May that ‘we expect about ten million bags of maize’.1 In the Zambian system of presidentialism and state capitalism, the purchasing, transportation, and storage of crops, as with many other agricultural functions, was in the hands of the state. This was so in terms of the close involvement of political figures at the highest level, and through the continued reliance upon the National Agricultural Marketing Board (Namboard) and the quasi-parastatal provincial co-operative marketing unions. President Kenneth Kaunda committed himself and his Government to success in the forthcoming harvest when he told Parliament in January: ‘I am not prepared to see a recurrence of what happened last year when thousands of bags of maize remained uncollected in various depots’; the state would ensure that the agencies involved in the collection of produce improved their performance.

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