British colonial rule and the white Rhodesian Government made Zimbabwe one of the world’s most inequitable countries. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 gave white settlers control of more than 51 percent of the country’s land, leaving areas less fertile and more arid to the native population. Despite the land reform implemented in the early 2000s, most black farmers still farm small plots of infertile land, with limited irrigation potential. Maize is Zimbabwe’s staple crop. It is grown mainly through rain-fed agriculture, making it highly vulnerable to droughts, which are increasingly problematic. Only three droughts were recorded by the country’s Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services (AGRITEX) between 1911 and 1970. Between 1971 and 2000, the number increased to seven, and between 2001 and 2009, seven droughts were recorded in just nine years.1 At the same time, most farmers experienced decreased yields even when there was good rainfall because of decreased soil fertility and increased reliance upon agrochemicals and hybrid seed. The government’s agricultural extension services have struggled to assist farmers. Early successes with systems integrating cropping and livestock have not been replicated due to rigid land use frameworks, which have not evolved since the 1930s. After independence, efforts to extend fertilizer and marketing services yielded remarkable success in the higher potential areas, but subsidies eventually proved unsustainable through the era of structural adjustment. Cash crops like cotton and sunflowers—promoted in collaboration with the private sector render farmers vulnerable to unstable market prices and dependent on costly inputs. Extension packages provided by the government are also deficient, as they vary little by soil type, rainfall regime, and other local agro-ecological and cultural realities. Finally, many international NGOs have been promoting conservation agriculture (CA) models, but these innovations typically do not persist beyond the period of heavy extension and subsidization, especially because like the government’s fertilizer recommendations they do not vary across different soil and rainfall zones.