undermining the benefits that farm blocks were expected to provide. Conversely, it may imply expansion of cultivated area beyond farm blocks that may be environmentally less sustainable.

Summary statistics on mode of acquisition in panel B of table 2 separately for farms that overlap and do not overlap with digitized parcels illustrate formal and informal institutions’ role in land administration and management. First, with 31% overall (57% of parcels without vs. 23% of parcels with overlap), a greater share of land was acquired from chiefs than from all government institutions together (30%), highlighting that traditional authorities continue to play a major role in land administration or management. Second, the difference is particularly pronounced for land that has title where 38% of parcels were inherited or purchased but 44% with vs. 17% without overlap with registered parcels, were acquired from a Government body. Third, formal institutions issued close to 80% of all offer letters (74% on overlapping and 83% on non-overlapping parcels) and the centralized nature of Zambia’s formal land institutions is illustrated by the fact that only 3% of parcels with formal documents were received from local government.

Before discussing descriptive statistics at parcel level, we focus on changes in output and key inputs with distance to the nearest resettlement or farm block, noting that resettlement blocks were established earlier, mostly on land taken over from European settlers whereas farm blocks were established later to solve the land assembly problem for commercial farmers (Roth 1995). Table 3 panel A suggests, based on listing data, that digitized parcels are larger than area utilized by individual farms, possibly due to informal subdivision or encroachment. Compared to 630 ha for digitized parcels that overlap with cultivated ones, the average size of used parcels is only 19 ha (table 2 panel B.1). Moreover, titled land that overlaps with digitized parcels is, with an average of 27 ha, almost double the size of land to which no formal document exist. Although not all the land in blocks is utilized, the time profile of acquisition points towards expansion that gradually moves away from the blocks.<sup>26</sup> Survey information in table 3 panel B suggests that cropping patterns, levels of output/ha, and profitability are not significantly higher inside farm blocks than outside. Moreover, crop output/ha, cost of purchased inputs and gross profit are higher by 30%, 10% and more than 60% on farms more than 20 km from the blocks than on farms inside them, possibly suggesting that more productive farmer (who acquired land more recently) find it difficult to acquire land in or next to farm blocks. While detailed analysis of profitability and the shadow price of labor is beyond the scope of this paper, family labor use increases monotonically with block distance up to the point where large farms more than 20 km from the blocks use some 60% more family labor/ha, possibly due to easier access to mechanized services on farm blocks.

> 26 With 12% of the total (23% within blocks), purchase plays a limited role for getting land access. Chiefs are the main avenue for accessing land outside blocks where 56% of area is accessed through them, although 22% of total and more than one-third of land not obtained via inheritance or purchase inside blocks is from chiefs.

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