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Who Becomes a Farmer?: Migrant Farmers and the Cotton Economy in the Mid-Zambezi Valley Frontier Region, Northern-Western Zimbabwe

Abstract Farmer support systems, mainly by the state, have long been considered as central in the agricultural development in Zimbabwe. While this is partly true, the main contention of this paper is that such a perspective fails to grasp the complex relationship between proletarianization and rural agriculture, and the significance of the rural economy within the life course of rural households. The paper develops this argument by focusing on the experiences of farmers in the mid-Zambezi to illustrate how they developed successful farming careers by investing income accumulated from employment. These farmers were formerly proletarianized. Rural production, therefore, met their income accumulation needs after retirements or retrenchments. The mid-Zambezi frontier offered scope for accumulation because of the availability of land and labour for extensive farming. The paper illustrates that the main aspect driving farming was access to financial capital accumulated from employment, which allowed farmers to take advantage of opportunities offered by the new environment. It concludes by examining policy implications of this case study for agricultural development in the country.