It has been estimated that Chitemene can only support 2-4 people per square km. It also relies on a high level of rainfall to guarantee the long-term fertility of the land is maintained. In addition there is an obvious need for trees. As the population of Zambia grows such systems become difficult to sustain. The land is used more intensively with cropping periods becoming longer and the periods of fallow becoming shorter, often down to 12 years.
Soils become increasingly infertile and crop yields decline.
Each km of land becomes less and less able to support the family or village that farmed it. In the 1970s and 80s this put pressure on small-scale farmers to break with traditional slash and burn methods and adopt more modern techniques that raised the productivity of the land. Since Independence the government subsidised small-scale farmers by ways of providing cheaper low cost imported fertilisers. However with the agricultural reforms in the 1990s by President Chiluba's government in response to the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the IMF, these subsidies have been reduced or cut back forcing up the price of fertiliser. Many small-scale farmers have been unable to afford the new prices or the cost of transporting it from the warehouses and have had little option to return to Chitemene.