In the Rhodesias a revolution, long desired in tropical agriculture, is quietly taking place: the emergence of professional farmers from the ranks of the undifferentiated peasentry. In most other African countries, the extension service is taken to the people and they are taught to practise better methods of farming on the sites where they already operate. But in Rhodesia the people often are uprooted. In Northern Rhodesia they are brought into ‘improved farming schemes’ opened up on new land; in Southern Rhodesia, they are given new farms in the Native Purchase Areas and on certain irrigation schemes, and even in the old Native reserves their arable fields have often been moved under schemes of ‘centralization’ or the operations of the Land Husbandry Act. This policy will produce a new ‘farming’ class, with income, rather than food, as its new outlook.
