The history of agricultural mechanisation is linked to periods of land reform in pre- and post-colonial Zimbabwe. However studies in agricultural mechanisation have eschewed the impact of the land reform and the reconfigured agrarian structure in their analysis. Yet, alongside these epochs, state interventions and private sector determinations mould access and ownership of tractors within and across the farming models. This paper reveals that a new global reach and emphasis in agricultural mechanisation from the early 2000s resulted in the resurgence in tractorisation and coincided with domestic efforts mainly through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the government-mediated More Food Africa (MFA) Brazilian tractor scheme. Based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in Mvurwi farming area, the paper establishes that lack of clear state policy and the economy-wide crisis in the post 2000s resulted in diverse implementation processes which generated dissimilar impacts across in different sites and farming models. Moreover limited state economic capacity to import resulted in the ‘new’ farmers in both A1 and A2 plots relying on the former large-scale commercial farms for second-hand tractors and the Brazilian MFA scheme for tractor hiring. Nonetheless some ‘newly’ settled small and medium scale farmers in these A1 and A2 models have acquired tractors using proceeds from the sale of agricultural proceeds and are beginning to provide a new source for tractor hiring services in Mvurwi. Regarding gender and age, some women participate in the MFA schemes, while the youth predominate the emerging private tractor hiring schemes in the fast track areas. Understanding the tractorisation process in Zimbabwe therefore requires a nuanced analysis of the reconfiguring agrarian economy in the countryside.