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The author explores the pricing policies pursued in Southern Rhodesia (Colonial Zimbabwe)and asserts that the pricing mechanisms secured few of the objectives of a sound marketing and pricing policy, which are largely self-regulatory and able to induce or restrain production. As such, the price policies in their operation did not obviate the need and cost of over much control but the producers themselves in order to cash in on economies of scale increased production and deliveries to the marketing agencies. The author instead proposes that while prices throughout the period under review (i.e. 1950- 1980) were generally not attractive in real and nominal terms and also from the producers´ perspective the settler farmers themselves were able to record decent returns on one hand and the area under production increased on the other hand along with productivity and the volume of marketed produce due to a recourse to non-price instruments in order to stimulate production.

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Makombe, Eric Kushinga is a doctoral student at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He has lectured at the Economic History Department of the University of Zimbabwe, where he received his BA and MA degrees. His research interests include: Agrarian, Gender and Labour histories, Post-colonialism and Development Discourses.

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