Development of village chicken production can be a sustainable way of helping to meet the welfare needs of rural populations and raise their living standards. There is a dearth of information on research conducted to characterize, understand and develop the village chicken production systems in Zimbabwe. This review focuses on constraints, opportunities and research needs for the improvement of village chicken productivity in Zimbabwe. Village chicken production in Zimbabwe is extensive and dominated by indigenous chickens that exhibit remarkable adaptation to local environments. The multitude functions of village chickens, which include the provision of high quality protein meat and eggs, cash through sales and socio-cultural roles, are discussed in detail. Human gender aspects in village chicken production are highlighted. The factors that hamper village chicken productivity are reviewed together with opportunities and research needs. The major constraints include shortage of feed, poor health and housing management. Any improvements in these constraints may lead to sustainable increase in village chicken productivity.

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The increasing complexity of African agriculture has put greater pressure on agricultural education and extension. The important role played by agricultural extension has led many African governments to devote a lot of resources to agricultural extension. This however is at odds with the increasing fiscal deficits and the rampant poor governance of public programs in these countries. As a result attention has been redirected towards making extension less burdensome to the governments and relevant to farmer needs. In Zimbabwe, while several studies have concentrated on describing the operation and effectiveness of the current government dominated extension system, insignificant work has gone into finding out the potential for the establishment of a private and fee for service extension system. The main objective of this paper was to find the factors determining the establishment of a private "feefor-service" extension system in Zimbabwe's smallholder agriculture and to give recommendations on the possible prime movers to a private, commercial agricultural extension system for smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe. A logistic regression model of binary choice was used as the major analytical tool. The study found out that the degree of commercialisation of farm enterprises, farmer income, farmer location (whether urban, rural or commercial), farm size, and risk attitude of the farmer significantly affect the demand for private fee-for-service extension and it was concluded that these variables should be considered when targeting farmers for provision of commercial extension services.

In-field variability of soil properties creates niches that have been perceived by smallholder farmers, especially in hostile environments, as constituting an essential part of their subsistence farming. They can exploit niche variability as a risk minimisation strategy for crop production. Smallholder farmers largely base their nutrient management strategies on their perception of niche fertility. The study physically and chemically characterised soil samples up to the 130 cm depth of predominant arable niches from a representative sample of nine smallholder farms with fields cropped for over 70 years. The niches were homestead surroundings, termitaria environments, areas under Parinari curatellifolia and open sandy patches. The data were analysed using discriminant analysis, a statistical method that investigated niche differentiation based on simultaneous analysis of soil nutrient variables. The analysis of variance complemented the discriminant analysis. Results showed that the first two T. J. Chikuvire and R. Foti are affiliated with the