While a regulatory framework will always be required, it must not be excessively and inappropriately restrictive. Businesses must be encouraged to flourish in support of rural livelihoods, capturing synergies with local agricultural production. To make the most of the new mosaic of land uses and economic activities, an areabased, local economic development approach is required. This would facilitate investment across activities, adding value to farm production. Today, with a new set of players engaged in local economic activity many possibilities open up. An areabased approach needs to draw in the private sector, farmer groups and government agencies, but with strong leadership from a revived local government, with rethought mandates and rebuilt capacities. Giving farmers a voice Reflecting a wide range of interests, the new resettlement farmers are highly diverse in class, gender and generational terms. This diversity has many advantages, adding new skills and experiences, but it is also a weakness. Formal organisation in the new resettlements is limited. The structures that formed the basis of the land invasions – the base commanders and the Committees of Seven, for example – have given way to other arrangements, and there is often limited collective solidarity. There are of course emergent organisations focused on particular activities – a garden, an irrigation scheme, a marketing effort, for example – but these are unlikely to become the basis of political representation and influence. Because politics has been so divisive in recent years, many shy away from seeing political parties as the basis for lobbying for change, and there are few other routes to expressing views. 16 Building a new set of representative farmers’ organisations, linked to an influential apex body, will be a long-term task, and will be highly dependent on the unfolding political alliances in rural areas. The new resettlements are characterised by an important and numerically large ‘middle farmer’ group. There is also a significant group of less successful farmers with different needs and interests. And there are those elites reliant on political patronage who, despite being relatively few in number, are disproportionately influential. In contrast to the past when smallholders could easily be marginalised and were courted only at elections for their votes, the new farmers – and particularly the burgeoning group of middle farmers - now control one of the most important economic sectors in the country, and must be relied upon for national food supply. Today, the politics of the countryside cannot be ignored. Zimbabwe’s rural politics has taken on a new form, and organised farmer groups may exert substantial pressure in ways that previously seemed unimaginable. How the new configuration of political forces will pan out in the future is a subject of hot debate, but the role of diverse agrarian interests, including new smallscale farmers, will certainly be important.