While the traditional anthropological distinction made between "horticulture" and "agriculture" is made on the basis of cultivation technology a more profitable set of contrasts can be made using ecological criteria.  Farming systems conventionally referred to as forms of horticulture are here termed forms of ecological agriculture in that they seek to work with and to varying extents mimic the natural ecology.  Ecological agriculture is contrasted with farming systems that seek to more dramatically redesign local ecosystems, maintaining more permanent sites of ecological disturbance that require greater and more constant levels of human intervention to maintain.  This ecological contrast is illustrated with a case material from Zimbabwe.

Keywords: agriculture, horticulture, agroecosystems, ecology, Zimbabwe