•FOR women agriculture can stand as a stepping stone to capital creation for other entrepreneurship support.

BY CLEMENT MUMA MATENGU? –

IN a rather fundamental sense, agricultural progress is normally a pre-requisite for industrial development.
This is clearly the case in a closed economy, where one of the most important pre-conditions of industrial expansion is meeting people’s demand for food.
Rising ACagricultural productivity supports and sustains industrial development in several ways.
First, it permits agriculture to release part of its labour force for industrial employment, while meeting the increasing food needs of the non-agricultural sector.
Second, it enables agriculture to release part of its labour force for industrial employment while meeting the increasing food needs of the non-agricultural sector.
Third, it raises agricultural income, thereby creating the rural savings which may then be mobilised, by direct or indirect means, to finance industrial development.
Finally, increased productivity enables agriculture to supply the major wage-good, which is food of industrial workers at prices favourable to the profitability of new industries.
For an open economy like Zambia, with access to international trade, the contribution of generally rising agricultural productivity to industrial development may be diminished.
Then the nation may find it more economical to import some of its food needs because its comparative advantage lies in non-food production, some of which it may export in exchange for food.
For example, it may find that foreign demand for industrial crops like cotton and copper is sufficiently large to support substantial exports and even to attract the foreign capital and entrepreneurial talent needed to develop such export industries.
Even here, however, rising fAood productivity is desirable, both because it may save scarce foreign exchange needed for financing imports of industrial capital and because it contributes to the integration of the dualistic agricultural economy, the existence of which has so often restricted the rate and momentum of economic progress.
Finally, if agricultural productivity is or becomes sufficiently high, the nation may enjoy a sufficiently high food sector, and enjoy food surplus of such magnitude as to permit food exports on favourable terms, with corresponding favourable effects on the balance of payments and domestic industrialisation.
Thus, it is clear that under any circumstances, increasing agricultural productivity makes an important contribution to general economic development and that, within considerable limits at least, it is one of the pre-conditions which must be established before take-off into self-sustained economic growth becomes possible.
Thus said, however, it is equally clear that industrial urban development creates conditions much more favourable for increasing agricultural productivity.
So there is great need to accelerate agricultural activities even at personal level for Zambia’s urban households.
For the youth, agriculture can stand as a stepping stone to capital creation for other entrepreneurship support.
Agriculture should not be labelled as an activity for the aged, it should be embraced by anyone at any age.
(The author is 4th-year student and president for Zambia Institute of Planners – CBU chapter)