Analyses of key macroeconomic variables of the economies of Nigeria and Zimbabwe suggest that their respective agricultural growth patterns had some impact on their import demand for food and agricultural commodities during the decade of the 1970's. Nigeria's production structure of agriculture dominated by smallholder farming and a relatively even distribution of rural purchasing power, which are characteristic of the Uniformly Small Farm (USF) growth pattern, enhanced aggregate effective domestic demand via linkages and encouraged domestic consumption oriented production. Conversely, Zimbabwe's Dual Size Structure (DSS) pattern of agricultural growth gave rise to a depressed domestic demand structure with weak links to the larger economy, and fostered commercial, export oriented production. The former resulted in strong import demand, the latter in food exports.