Food security is seriously threatened by the low productivity of smallholder farmers, endemic poverty and widespread land degradation in the Northern Region of Zambia, The challenge is how to raise smallholder productivity at farm level in the face of developmental conflicts caused by demographic change, economic growth, strife and insecurity. The government is caught between the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) drawn up to enable it to pay off its huge foreign debt on the one hand, and the need to cushion the vulnerable sections of society (mostly smallholder farmers) from the worst aspects of the monetary squeeze on the other, Current evidence points to a dangerous imbalance, with the poor being hit hardest, but there are further steps which could be taken to support smallholders.
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