The Central African Film Unit (CAFU) catalogue listed The Two Farmers as its fourth production. The director Stephen Peet explained, in an interview with Kedmon Hungwe, that he developed the idea for the script while working on another film – probably Mujenjo Builds a Bridge – in the agricultural district of Tanda, in Southern Rhodesia. The filming for The Two Farmers also took place here, with Peet using a government-sponsored agricultural demonstration plot in the Chiduku Reserve near Rusape (Hungwe, 1991, 231).

Peet acknowledged that on viewing the film in 1988, he found it ‘appallingly exaggerated’ (Peet had, in the meantime, become an acclaimed maker of BBC television documentaries, particularly associated with the long-running oral history series Yesterday’s Witness) and ‘was of the opinion that the elaborate State-funded system of farming portrayed by the film was an exaggeration of what was attainable by individual peasant farmers’ (Hungwe, 1991, 231). However, Hungwe suggested that the film ‘appears to have been successful with rural audiences’, and Rosaleen Smyth noted that the names of the wise and foolish farmers – Panganai and Washoma – were commonly used ‘to apply, where apposite, to local farmers’ (Smyth, 1983, 142).

Furthermore, Hungwe argued that ‘as a result of the success of The Two Farmers, the CAFU adopted Peet’s script as a guide for many subsequent scripts’ (Hungwe, 1991, 232). George Pearson, the director-in-chief of the Colonial Film Unit, referred to this narrative formula – also used in the previous CAFU production, Zimbani– as ‘the parable of Mr Wise and Mr Foolish’ (Smyth, 1983, 136). James Burns recognised Zimbani and The Two Farmers as ‘typical of the agricultural instruction films’. ‘They contain none of the moral complexities’ he wrote, ‘evident in the film scenarios proposed by Africans. In their place are the simple dichotomies of modern and traditional, cooperative and intransigent, wise and foolish’ (Burns, 2003, 83). This formula was also criticised by an African member of the Gold Coast Film Unit in Colonial Cinema in 1950, as he argued that this ‘mock heroic’ formula was based on the assumption that Africans are ‘uneducated’ and would not understand a more complicated narrative (Colonial Cinema, 1950, 29).

Many of the films followed an established mode of storytelling, but the narrative itself and the message promoted were also largely consistent across the Unit’s work. Rosaleen Smyth argued that ‘Many farming films have variations on one plot; an impoverished farmer gains material prosperity and happiness through joining some government farming scheme’ (Smyth, 1983, 136). Pius Nyambara suggested these films ‘represented a new strategy that the state used to promote a new style of rural life attainable through cultivation’ (Nyambara, 2000, 110). The films were also as, James Burns noted, ‘generally temperance-minded: Mr Foolish characters invariably preferred inebriation to hard work’ (Burns, 2003, 82). This is evident in The Two Farmers as the CAFU catalogue notes that Washoma ‘is content to loaf, to drink and to stay poor, but Panganai wants better things’ (CAFU Catalogue, 1).

The Two Farmers played throughout Southern Rhodesia, but was also screened extensively in Nigeria in 1952 as part of research into rural audiences there. Most of the reports suggested that the audiences – and commentators – struggled to understand the principles on which the demonstrator developed the farm, while others did not see the need for improved techniques, or did not believe that these methods would work on their land. Furthermore, the reports emphasised that the farmers in Nigeria did not have much need or desire for a scotch cart. However, the reports also noted that the local commentator would modify aspects of the story – for example the characters were given names in Yoruba, Hausa and Birom – indicating that these films were often adapted for specific audiences (Morton-Williams, 1952, 32, 102-108).