Springer 2007
Agriculture and Human Values (2008) 25:3–11 DOI 10.1007/s10460-007-9075-z
Maize, food insecurity, and the field of performance in southern Zambia
Nicholas Sitko Geography Department, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA Accepted in revised form January 23, 2007
Abstract. This paper explores the interrelationship between maize farming, the discourse of modernity, and the performance of a modern farmer in southern Zambia. The post-colonial Zambian government discursively constructed maize as a vehicle for expanding economic modernization into rural Zambia and undoing the colonial governmentÕs urban modernization bias. The pressures of neo-liberal reform have changed this discursive construction in ways that constitute maize as an obstacle to sustained food security in southern Zambia. Despite this discursive change, maize continues to occupy a central position in the farming systems of the region. I argue that the continued prevalence of maize in southern Zambia can be understood as a performance that allows farmers to maintain their identities as modern rural subjects. The paper concludes with the policy implications of the field of performance on two contemporary debates in Zambian food security: the use of GMO crops and the promotion of cassava as a drought tolerant alternative to maize. Key words: Food security, Maize, Neoliberalism, Zambia Abbreviation: MCBs – maize control boards Nicholas Sitko is a doctoral student in the geography department at the University of Colorado. His research interests include multi-disciplinary approaches to food studies, critical development, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper presents initial findings from field work conducted in Zambia in 2006. His dissertation research will further develop the relationship between neo-liberalism, food security, and agricultural production by employing analytical concepts derived from political-economic and cultural studies.
Introduction Standing beside his butala, a round wooden edifice used to store dried maize, a southern Zambian farmer proudly exclaims, ‘‘IÕve grown copper.’’ A butala full of maize symbolizes more than economic prosperity and the assurance of food security for farmers in southern Zambia: a full butala is also a discursively constructed visual symbol of the modern farmer. Farmers in southern Zambia often cite a lack of industrial inputs, such as fertilizer and hybrid seeds, as the principal obstacles hindering sufficient harvests. A full butala, which is often spatially positioned within homesteads in full view of passers-by, identifies its owner as a ‘‘good farmer,’’ with the necessary knowledge to negotiate access to inputs and to use them appropriately. Through the discourse of modernity, copper mining and maize farming have been linked to the economic development of Zambia and creation of modern Zambia. Since British colonialism, copper mining has served as an economic growth engine
and source of industrial wage labor for Zambians (Ferguson, 1999). To feed this growing urban population, maize consumption was promoted by the colonial government (McCann, 2005). I argue that by growing copper in the maize fields of southern Zambia, farmers enact a performance of modernity that has been scripted under multiple political-economic regimes. This performance, in fact, represents a practice that powerfully constitutes what it means to be a farmer in southern Zambia. ZambiaÕs reliance on copper as its principal source of foreign exchange, coupled with copperÕs international price volatility, positions Zambia on unreliable foundations for sustained economic growth. Consequently, Zambia has experienced a series of economic booms and busts that continue to hinder the countryÕs growth. Similarly, due to the unpredictability of rains in southern Zambia, maize production is an unreliable source of food and income for the rural population. Periods of extended drought or excessive rains damage maize more than
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many other crops, leading to severe periodic maize shortages in the region. After ZambiaÕs independence in 1964, the dominant discourse of modernizing ZambiaÕs rural subjects led post-colonial officials to discount the unfavorable physical environment of southern Zambia and to promote a cash-based, input-intensive maize economy (Office of Development and Planning, 1966). This post-colonial discourse constituted maize, the use of chemical inputs, and access to cash markets as the vehicles through which farmers would abandon their traditional agricultural practices and join in the governmentÕs effort to make Zambia a modern nation (Office of Development and Planning, 1966). Following the collapse of the international copper market in 1973, the Zambian government incurred massive external debts while attempting to maintain these policies of rural modernization (Chizuni, 1994). Without adequate foreign exchange from copper, subsidizing maize production and marketing became increasingly difficult for the Zambian government. In 1992, in the face of Western efforts to promote global neo-liberalism and a mounting national debt, the Zambian government acquiesced to the demands of its foreign lenders and adopted a neo-liberal approach to the rural sector (Chizuni, 1994). Neo-liberal policies introduced a new discourse on rural development and food security in Zambia. In place of government control over maize markets and input distribution, the government promoted the development of a privatized maize economy. The underlying principle of this neo-liberal maize economy is that ecological comparative advantage should guide farmersÕ cropping decisions. This new discourse has constituted maize in southern Zambia as a new type of object in the eyes of policy-makers. Maize is no longer understood to be the vehicle for promoting rural modernization. Instead, policy-makers see the prevalence of maize and its susceptibility to failure under drought conditions as the primary obstacles to sustained food security in southern Zambia. This shift in the discursive construction of maize has led the Zambian government and non-governmental organizations to mount a campaign aimed at encouraging the production of drought tolerant crops, such as cassava, across southern Zambia. By removing incentives for maize production, and promoting drought tolerant alternatives, the Zambian government and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) hope that farmers in southern Zambia will meet their food security needs through the rational abandonment of maize production in this drought-prone region (Chizuni, 1994). However, government efforts to promote alternative crops in southern Zambia have been stymied by farmersÕ unwillingness to abandon maize production. Despite chronic levels of food insecurity, regular maize crop failure, and little government support, 95.5% of farmers in southern Zambia continue to grow maize, while only 9% have
incorporated cassava into their production systems (Central Statistics Office, 2003. In light of the uncertainty of maize production, food security experts and government officials have been confounded by maizeÕs persistence in southern Zambia (Haggblade and Zulu, 2003). These experts often cite lack of knowledge about alternative crops among farmers in the region as the obstacle to incorporating these crops into local farm systems. From this perspective, education is seen as the remedy for improving the food security situation in the region (Haggblade and Zulu, 2003). This paper develops a theory for understanding the continued prevalence of maize in rural southern Zambia under a neo-liberal regime. Specifically, I argue that the fields of maize that dot the landscape of southern Zambia can be understood as fields of performance, where notions of modernity maintain the performance of maize production and consumption in rural southern Zambia. I begin with a brief history of maize and its relationship to copper mining and the discourse of modernity in Zambia. The following section develops the theoretical argument of a field of performance, highlighting this theoryÕs points of departure from previous studies of food security and the emerging literature on the cultural politics of food. Drawing on interviews and participant observations in rural southern Zambia, I then demonstrate how people in the region enact the field of performance through their daily practices of maize production, consumption, and exchange. I conclude this paper with a discussion of the implications of a field of performance on current food security debates in southern Zambia.
The history of maize and the modernization of Zambia Maize is a new world crop and arrived in Africa on slave trading ships from Brazil. Portuguese slave traders promoted maize as a food source for slaves being transported across the Atlantic. The physical characteristics of maize made it an ideal crop for the slave trade. Because of its hard outer shell, maize can withstand long storage periods without spoiling. Additionally, because of its low water content, maize contains more calories per kilogram than many other crops, making it easy to ship large quantities of calories in relatively small spaces. Together, these physical characteristics made maize a logical choice to facilitate the forced transport of millions of people from Africa to the New World. Promoted in part by the expanding reaches of African slave traders, maize further penetrated the African interior. By the time British explorers arrived in the region that would become Zambia, maize was already well established in several areas (Miracle, 1966).
Maize, food insecurity, and the field of performance The physical characteristics that made maize an ideal crop for the slave trade also made it an ideal crop for feeding ZambiaÕs industrialization under colonial rule. Copper deposits in central Zambia were to serve as the foundation for ZambiaÕs industrialization and the modernization of its ‘‘backward’’ agrarian population (Brelsford, 1960). Through coercive strategies, such as ‘‘hut taxes,’’ the male rural population was forced from villages into industrial wage labor in the copper mines. Colonial officials justified these tactics by claiming that the money economy, promoted through industrial wage labor, would help to undo the backward and traditional structures of African society and allow Zambians to reap the benefits of modern life in a European image (Colonial Office, 1946). To feed this growing industrial population, the colonial government instituted policies that encouraged European settlement and maize production in the fertile plateau region of southern Zambia (Colonial Office, 1946). A train line was constructed to connect the European maize farms in the south with the copper mines in the Central Province. At the same time, African farming was forcibly confined to ‘‘traditional areas’’ in order to prevent African farmers from encroaching on the European maize monopoly and to contain the process of African modernization within the industrial sector. Through these policies, maize became the staple food of a growing industrial population. At the same time, maize production for market sale was spatially confined to the European farmers on the southern plateau. Maize shortages during World War II threatened ZambiaÕs industrialization, and forced colonial officials to reconsider their racially divided maize policies (Colonial Office, 1951). To ensure an adequate supply of maize to the copper mines, colonial officials identified a handful of ‘‘advanced’’ African farmers to be taught modern agriculture techniques, including fertilizer use, and were given access to maize markets (Colonial Office, 1951). Although these policies benefited a handful of African farmers, the majority of the rural population was maintained in their designated traditional areas; the modern African subject was still viewed as an industrial laborer and not as a farmer. Zambian independence in 1964 brought with it a belief among the new ruling elite that government policies had to be reconfigured to undo the effects of the colonial urban-industrial bias. To this end, the new national government sought to ‘‘break through the subsistence economy’’ in rural regions, by introducing maize control boards (MCBs) to even the most isolated villages (Office of Development and Planning, 1966: 2). MCBs, initially created under colonial rule as a way to favor European producers, were expanded by the post-colonial government to provide all Zambian farmers with a market for their maize and encouraged the expansion of the money economy into the rural hinterlands of Zambia. In
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addition, MCBs provided small-scale Zambian farmers with the tools of modern, intensive agriculture, such as fertilizer and hybrid seeds. Through the development of this new maize infrastructure, the government encouraged subsistence farmers to undergo a ‘‘psychological shift toward agriculture’’ and join the urban population on the path to modernity (Office of Development and Planning, 1966: 29). However, maize centered policies came at the expense of other crops, such as millet, sorghum, and cassava. These crops are more drought tolerant than maize and possibly better adapted to the unpredictable climate of southern Zambia. Because cassava is the crop that experts are currently promoting as the vehicle for achieving food security in southern Zambia, I provide a brief history of cassava in Zambia. Like maize, cassava is a new world crop introduced by Portuguese slave traders to Africa. However, unlike maize, cassavaÕs high water content, bulkiness, and propensity for quick spoilage did not make it an attractive food for the slave trade (Mater, 1978). CassavaÕs hardiness under drought conditions did, however, attract colonial officials, who made ‘‘strenuous efforts...to encourage the cultivation of famine reserve cassava gardens in every village’’ (Colonial Office, 1951: 22). These strenuous efforts included penalizing farmers whose cassava gardens were smaller than a stoneÕs throw in width (Haggblade and Zulu, 2003). As a result of this colonial legacy, older people in southern Zambia still associate cassava with colonial oppression. This is not the case with farmers in northern Zambia, who cultivated cassava long before colonial occupation. Because of the divergent colonial histories of cassava and maize, maize was the only crop in Zambia that could link the traditional subsistence economies of rural Zambia with the modern urban industrial sector in the copper mines (Office of Development and Planning, 1966). Following the global recession of the 1970s, the copper industry collapsed, which undermined the Zambian governmentÕs efforts to modernize the rural sector through maize-centered policies (Woods, 1990). Strained by a lack of foreign exchange during the 1970s, the Zambian government used loans to finance the operation of its MCBs for more than a decade. Rising interest rates in the 1980s, coupled with continued low prices in the international copper market, increased the difficulty of servicing loans for the Zambian government. In 1992, the Zambian government was finally forced to abandon its efforts to subsidize a cash-based maize economy and adopt a neo-liberal approach its agricultural sector (Chizuni, 1994). Because MCBs and wage labor served as two of the few conduits for cash to enter rural Zambia, the removal of the MCBs and the collapse of the copper industry dismantled the cash-based economies in rural regions. With the collapse of these economies, the
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discourse of modernizing rural Zambia was replaced with the discourse of neo-liberalism. Neo-liberal discourse extols the virtues of individual choice, rationality, comparative advantage, and competition, in contrast to the collective, state-led modernization polices of the previous era. Neo-liberalism stresses that the logic of comparative advantage will drive peopleÕs production and consumption practices. Following this logic, without access to subsidized markets for their maize and suffering an ecological disadvantage in rainfall, farmers in southern Zambia should abandon maize production and incorporate more drought-tolerant crops into their farm systems (Chizuni, 1994). The comparative advantage of drought-tolerant crops over maize in southern Zambia should be enough incentive for farmers to change their production practices, and meet their own food security needs through the production of crops such as cassava. However, this has not happened. While the levels of food-insecure households have hovered around 42% since 1992, maize still serves as the primary food crop in agrarian southern Zambia (Kapungwe, 2005). In the following section, I suggest ways of understanding the continued prevalence of maize in southern Zambia in this era of neo-liberalism.
The field of performance: Food security and modernity in southern Zambia In Zambia, James Ferguson (1999) was stunned by the extent to which the language of modernity had permeated the ways in which people understood themselves and those around them. He noted that notions of modernity moved beyond official political and economic discourses and had become ‘‘a local tongue’’ for much of the Zambian population (Ferguson, 1999: 84). Ferguson focused on the urban experience of Zambian modernization through an ethnographic study of copper mine workers. Because of the discursive connections between copper mining and maize farming in Zambia, the ‘‘local tongue’’ of modernity is equally prevalent in rural southern Zambia. Farmers in southern Zambia state that a modern farmer – one who uses chemical inputs, hybrid seeds, and receives cash for surpluses – is by definition a ‘‘good farmer.’’ Conversely, ‘‘bad farmers’’ are farmers who are not familiar with the benefits of intensive agriculture, do not know how to apply fertilizer, will reuse harvested seeds, and will never have a surplus to be sold. In other words, bad farmers are the traditional African farmers, historically identified as backwards and underdeveloped by colonial and post-colonial regimes. Understanding the relationship between maize policies and maize as a symbol of modernity requires viewing maize as an object that lies at the intersection of politicaleconomic structures and cultural practices.
Foods are unique objects in social systems because of the place they occupy as a physiological necessity for survival, a direct link between people and the natural environment, and objects around which groups of people organize themselves and come to understand their social world. As a result of this unique combination of characteristics, food has the ability to fundamentally shape and give meaning to a wide-range of human experiences that are beyond the rational economic explanations favored by neo-liberal discourse. The act of producing food connects people to the natural world in very specific ways. The crops farmers choose to grow are not predetermined by the environment in which they live, though the environment does place certain limitations on crop choices. Instead, food crops and the natural environment interact within a social and cultural framework to condition how people come to see the environment around them (Goodman and Redclift, 1991). In southern Zambia, maize farmers view their drought-prone environment as a natural obstacle that can be overcome with appropriate planting schedules, correct choice of hybrid seed, and application of fertilizer. This can be contrasted with cassava farmers in northern Zambia, who overcome the obstacles of leached soils and heavy rains by utilizing a form of shifting cultivation know as citemene. In addition, the act of consuming food, while a physiological necessity for survival, is equally a vehicle for uniting social groups through the act of eating and sharing food (Richards, 1932). In southern Zambia, maize is an important gift during times of food scarcity. Through gift exchanges of maize, systems of reciprocity are created and clan relationships are maintained. It is therefore important to think of maize farming and consumption as something more than an economic activity carried out by rational actors. In important ways, maize production in southern Zambia allows people in the region to give meaning to both the physical world with which they interact and the social worlds of which they are part (Mintz, 1986). Following James Duncan (1980: 197), the acts associated with maize production and consumption are cultural, where culture is understood ‘‘as a set of traditions and beliefs that may guide action especially when they are defined by the actors themselves as ÔnaturalÕ or ÔcorrectÕ modes of behaviors.’’ Despite concerted efforts to promote alternatives, the prevalence of maize production and consumption under a neo-liberal regime suggests that the practices associated with maize farming constitute a set of correct modes of behavior in southern Zambia. Although cultural symbols are often contested and negotiated at multiple scales, they do serve as important forms of cultural identification (Watson and Caldwell, 2005). Re-constituting maize through politicaleconomic discourse as an obstacle to food security, as opposed to a vehicle for rural modernization, may change
Maize, food insecurity, and the field of performance the political-economic environment in which the people of southern Zambia are situated. However, this does not require that people in southern Zambia abandon maize cultivation, because maize serves as an important cultural signifier that helps them navigate their social world. Because maize figures prominently in debates over food security and famines in southern Zambia, understanding the relationship between maize as a cultural object and an object that is subject to political-economic manipulation requires a re-thinking of the standard academic approaches to food insecurity. Standard academic approaches to food insecurity and famine are rooted in an understanding that these important humanitarian issues are not simply the product of natural disasters, but instead are the result of social inequalities generated through unequal political-economic forces (Watts, 1983; Copans, 1983; Franke and Chasin, 1980). Focusing on the social production of famines and food insecurity has helped to de-naturalize these issues in drought-prone regions, by demonstrating that famines and food insecurity are ‘‘economic disasters, not just food crises’’ (Sen, 1981: 162). This politicaleconomic thinking has provided a foundation upon which most literature in this field has been built. In particular, academics have investigated how colonial and post-colonial policies have increased certain populationsÕ susceptibility to famine and food insecurity (Watts, 1983; Franke and Chasin, 1980; and Copans, 1983). This research has shown that some populations have become more susceptible to these humanitarian disasters because of the environmental and social consequences of modern agricultural practices and polices. Such modern policies and practices have led to mono-cropping (Franke and Chasin, 1980), soil degradation (Copans, 1983), exposure to the international economy (Watts, 1983), and the abandonment of previous strategies for coping with drought and food scarcity (Watts, 1983). In addition, studies of household level food security suggest that a host of local power relations – particularly gender divisions – dictate who is fed and who is not when food is scarce (Charles and Kerr, 1986). In southern Zambia, both age and gender have been shown to be important determinants in household level food security studies (Cliggett, 2005). Together these studies suggest the importance of understanding how local, national, and international political-economic structures construct an agricultural landscape in such a way that increases the vulnerability of many of the poorest and most social marginal people in a region. This political-economic approach to food security does not adequately address the role of foods, such as maize and cassava, as cultural signifiers for Zambian farmers. Taking a critical perspective on the agricultural landscape of southern Zambia is a useful way to explore the relationship between foods, including their properties as commodities
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and cultural signifiers, and food insecurity in the region. Following Don Mitchell (1996), the agricultural landscape of Zambia can be understood as comprised of a visible and hidden component. From this perspective, the visible landscape in fact disguises the myriad hidden interrelationships between people and institutions that constitute it. For Mitchell, a landscape can be understood by analytically separating the relationship between what the landscape is (the visible landscape), how the landscape is socially produced and reproduced (politically and economically), and how the landscape functions in society (as a cultural signifier) (Mitchell, 1996: 30). In southern Zambia, many food security experts see an abundance of maize cultivation and consumption, an absence of cassava, and frequent drought conditions leading to problems of food scarcity. The paradoxical nature of this visible landscape leaves some perplexed by what they feel is an irrational food choice, given the physical environment of southern Zambia and the discourse of neo-liberalism. To understand the visible landscape embodied in the fields of maize, I suggest thinking of these fields of maize as fields of performance. The field of performance is a dramaturgical term that seeks to explain the visible landscape of southern Zambia, by uncovering the backstage interrelationship between political-economic structures and cultural practices. In Zambia, the discourse of rural modernization led to the creation of maize-based agricultural policies and institutions that constituted maize as an integral component of the modernization process. Escobar (1995: 59) suggests that projects of modernist economic development are ‘‘above all a cultural production, a way of producing human subjects and social orders of a certain kind.’’ Through policies aimed at modernizing rural Zambia, farmers in southern Zambia have come to see the act of producing and consuming maize as the very definition of a modern rural subject, while a social hierarchy has been constructed that privileges good farmers over bad farmers. Understood locally as participation in the money economy and the use of chemical inputs, modernity provides insight into the construction of such social orderings. The question of why these fields of maize have survived the discursive shift to neo-liberalism and the reconstruction of maize as an obstacle to food security remains unanswered. Theories of performance expand on discursive analyses of modernity and help to illuminate how the continued prevalence of maize is maintained in southern Zambia. Louisa Schein (1999: 361) states that ‘‘the modern is usefully thought of not only as a context in which people make their lives, nor only as a discursive regime that shapes subjectivities, but also as powerfully constituted and negotiated through performance.’’ As she suggests, the tension between state-level modernist and traditionalist discourses leads agrarian people to ‘‘refuse their
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consignment to the role of impoverished, rural, tradition bearers and attempt to make membership in the prestigious category of modernity less exclusive, more negotiable’’ (Schein, 1999: 372). Despite changes in discourses surrounding maize, successful maize farming continues to require technical and market savvy in southern Zambia. Through the application of technical knowledge required for maize cultivation, southern Zambian farmers negotiate access to what they view as an important social category. In the context of southern Zambia, the social category of a modern farmer is constructed with the traditional other as its object of reference. To abandon maize farming requires more than the abandonment of a staple crop. Abandoning maize provokes questions about the very foundation of many farmersÕ identities as good farmers. The performance of maize farming can be seen as a form of resistance to discursive changes. In addition, farmers enact the field of performance, the performance of a modern maize farmer, in part as a way to gain access to a locally privileged social category. Local community members can quickly compile a list of people they consider to be good farmers. These good farmers command a great deal of respect within the community. People turn to them for farming advice, ask them for support in times of food scarcity, and tend to be deferential to them in community meetings. In other words, entrance into this social category through the performance of modern maize farming is associated with political and cultural power in southern Zambia. The concept of a field of performance can be situated in the emerging literature on the cultural politics of food and eating (Watson and Caldwell, 2005). This field of inquiry recognizes the power of foodÕs semiotic value to shape food systems, but moves beyond the static, structural approaches to foodÕs meaning advocated by Levi-Strauss (1965) and Douglas (1966). The cultural politics of food argues that the meaning of food is not passed on uncontested from one generation to the next. Instead, what certain foods mean to people must be understood within the broader context of political and economic change, fuelled in part by the dynamics of capitalism and its ideological foundation of modernization. The emergence of the cultural politics of food has been provoked by the mutually constitutive relationship between dietary changes within affluent segments of society, which resists industrially produced foods and demands alternatives, and the ‘‘globalized’’ food system, which both shapes these food preferences and restructures itself in response. Food producers in the developing world have been considered in this literature as agents in the global food system who respond to, resist, and at times transform the demands of affluent consumers and powerful retailers for high quality exotic and counter-seasonal foods (Freidberg, 2004). The field of performance moves away from focusing on the globalization of the food system, and small-scale
producersÕ position within this system, toward an understanding of the interactions between the ideologies and discourses of modernization and neo-liberalism. In particular, it illuminates how these discursive interactions are experienced and understood in the context of semisubsistence farming. Across the globe farmers are confronted with the contradictions of a neo-liberal discourse that seeks to supplant decades of state-led, and internationally sanctioned, agricultural modernization policies. How farmers in southern Zambia negotiate this change in policy direction may differ markedly from maize farmers in southern Mexico or rice farmers in Southeast Asia, based on a number of context specific differences including local gender relations, colonial histories, and state bureaucratic structures. The ways in which farmers negotiate the contradictions between changing discursive regimes and how this negotiation is expressed on the local landscape, visibly, socially, and culturally is what the field of performance seeks to explore. The ideas expressed in the field of performance may help researchers explore other contexts within which farmers are confronted with the discursive shift from state-led agricultural modernization to neo-liberalism. In doing so, it is hoped that a more complete picture of the current global food system will emerge. In the following section I describe how farmers in southern Zambia enact the field of performance. This is followed by several practical applications of this theory to contemporary debates over food security in Zambia.
The performance of a modern farmer Many Tonga people, the primary ethnic group in southern Zambia, can recount a myth about how they became farmers through the choice to produce maize. According to the myth, a European official offered Chief Monze, a dominant figure in Tonga history, the choice between a kernel of maize or a gun. Chief Monze chose the kernel of maize and in doing so defined the Tonga people as farmers and not warriors – a definition that prevails today. Ferguson (1999: 13–14) suggests a myth can be understood from two perspectives: First, there is the popular usage, which takes myth to be false or factually inaccurate version of things that has come to be widely believed. Second, there is the anthropological use of the term, which focuses on the storyÕs social function: a myth in this sense is not just a mistaken account but a cosmological blueprint that lays down fundamental categories and meanings for the organization and interpretation of experience. This particular myth suggests three important relationships between maize and peopleÕs perceptions of their identities in southern Zambia. First, people in this region
Maize, food insecurity, and the field of performance see themselves as farmers. Though given the option to be warriors, they choose the agrarian life to define their culture. Second, being a Tonga farmer requires cultivating maize. Though people across Zambia have grown crops such as millet and sorghum for centuries, the maize kernel symbolizes a conscious choice by Tonga people to differentiate themselves relative to other ethnic groups and follow the European agricultural model. Finally, the European maize plantations in southern Zambia are seen as the source of the knowledge and technology that constitute what it means to be a farmer. By working on European maize plantations, people in southern Zambia learned to use cattle and oxen to plow fields and cultivate maize on extensive plots of land. Their skill with cattle is a source of pride. The Tonga people will often invoke this skill when talking about other tribes, whom they see as backward because these other tribes lack farming knowledge and expertise. Thus, to be a Tonga is to be a farmer and to be a farmer is to produce maize. Maize cultivation requires more technical knowledge than other crops that have been promoted as famine reserves in the area. As one farmer put it, ‘‘growing cassava is for lazy people who want fast money... when you harvest cassava you must sell it or eat it immediately. This is not a business.’’ People in southern Zambia who do not grow maize often have to fend off claims by their peers that they are either lazy or incompetent. Of the 30 farmers interviewed for this research, only one said that he did not grow maize. Although maize stalks were clearly visible around his homestead, he does not plant extensive field of maize and therefore does not consider himself a maize farmer. Instead, he grows cotton, which he sells for cash, and then purchases maize. In the course of our conversation he repeatedly reminded me that he was once a good farmer, that he had once had large fields of maize that were the envy of his neighbors. However, the distance from his homestead to his fields made it difficult for him to prevent ‘‘bush pigs,’’ which had developed a taste for maize, from damaging his fields. As a result, he was forced to cultivate less palatable cotton on his fields. Noting that his neighbors had ceased to have problems with bush pigs, this farmer stated that he would plant maize the following year, and therefore become a ‘‘good farmer’’ once again. Being a good farmer, he said, would ease tensions within his household, because his wives would no longer pester him about not having enough maize, and lessen the ridicule he faced from other men in the area for not having a butala of maize. For the people in southern Zambia, being a farmer requires more than just growing cash crops or sticking a cassava stalk in the ground and waiting for it to mature. Farming demands growing extensive fields of maize, knowledge of types of hybrid seeds that are appropriate for different climates, rates of fertilizer application, and
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cattle. As one farmer stated, without the ability to use these inputs, ‘‘you are nothing....you are not fit to be in the village.’’ Yet, the removal of government supports for maize production and marketing have made it increasingly difficult for people in southern Zambia to obtain the things they need to perform as farmers. They no longer have access to cash as they once did, because maize sales are no longer mediated through government-controlled MCBs. Due to the lack of cash, inputs such as fertilizer and hybrid seeds have also become increasingly scarce. To compensate for the removal of these defining features of a modern farmer, maize has taken on the role of a medium of exchange, where surpluses of maize can now be used to negotiate access to the tools that constitute being a farmer. In the market center of rural villages, maize traders sit by their stalls and trade household goods, such as clothing and pots and pans, as well as farming implements, including spare parts for plows, seeds, and fertilizer for maize. Though prohibited under the previous economic regime, neo-liberalism has allowed for the proliferation of an economy where maize serves an important medium of exchange. Both farmers and traders agree that ‘‘maize and cash…are the same thing.’’ By the gallon, the bucket, and the 90 kg bag, maize is transacted in order to maintain the performance that constitutes this landscape. People will exchange a 100 kg bag of maize for a 10 kg bag of improved hybrid seeds, enough to plant one hectare, to be paid following the harvest. Similarly, a bag of fertilizer can now be obtained for bags of maize instead of cash. From the perspective of the field of performance, supplementing maize for cash is a logical response for farmers in southern Zambia, whose very cultural identity is threatened by a change in political-economic discourse.
The food security policy implications of a field of performance To apply the theoretical insights of a field of performance, I examine two on-going food security debates in Zambia. First, I consider the recent rejection of genetically modified food aid from the United States. Second, I explore the efforts of CARE International, a non-governmental organization, to promote cassava as an alternative, labor-saving, drought tolerant crop in southern Zambia. The field of performance and fields of maize in southern Zambia are issues of food security because neoliberal discourse now constitutes maize as an obstacle to sustained food security in this region. This particular discourse has not, however, been applied to the large plantations that continue to produce maize along the rail line of the southern Zambian plateau. The maize produced on these plantations is seen as an important
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source of food for the urban population and of foreign exchange when sold to European markets. Neo-liberal discourse privileges export industries in developing nations, because these industries are seen to generate much needed foreign exchange for the economy. Because of their position in the Zambian economy, these plantations continue to receive government support for fertilizer and hybrid seeds through a national cost-sharing program (Ministry of Agriculture and Co-Operatives, 2004). Therefore, two divergent discourses on maize co-exist in Zambia. For small-scale producers, maize is constructed as an obstacle to food security. This discourse suggests that education about drought tolerant crops will prompt southern Zambian farmers to abandon maize cultivation. Alternatively, maize produced on large-scale farm systems is constituted as an object for economic growth, as a commodity for foreign exchange, and as cheap food for ZambiaÕs urban population. In 2002, these divergent discourses on maize came into conflict, as a famine affecting 23 million Zambians demanded international intervention (FEWS, 2002). During this widespread famine, when foods scarcities were at their peak, the Zambian government rejected a shipment of maize from the United States because the shipment contained genetically modified maize (ABC News, 2002). The Zambian government feared that the genetically modified maize would find its way into the genetic pool of Zambian maize, thereby eliminating ZambiaÕs European market for maize, because the European Union currently requires labeling of genetically modified crops and supports a cautionary approach to these crops. Despite the threat of losing international market shares, the use of GMO maize could provide a technical solution to the problems associated with maize production in drought-prone southern Zambia. As the previous discussion suggests, there would be little local resistance among small-scale farmers in this region to the introduction of new agricultural technologies, they may in fact be warmly embraced. However, the Zambian government prefers to support large-scale maize production that can be sold for export, while promoting the use of drought-tolerant crops such as cassava to cope with crop failures and food insecurity among small-scale farmers. Promoting cassava in southern Zambia potentially ameliorates the tension between food insecurity and the dual representations of maize as an obstacle to food security and as a source of foreign exchange. However, as the concept of the field of performance suggests, successfully integrating cassava into the farm systems of southern Zambia requires a representation of cassava as a technological advancement and not as technological regression. Currently, CARE International, along with other NGOs, is working to promote cassava in southern Zambia as a drought-tolerant, labor-saving crop. Because
HIV/AIDS has seriously affected the people of productive ages in the region, a non-labor intensive alternative to maize is seen to be a logical solution to the interrelated problems of food and labor shortages. Nevertheless, promoting cassava as a crop that requires few inputs or technical knowledge fails because this representation of cassava conflicts with peoplesÕ identities as technically savvy, modern farmers. As the field of performance suggests, being a farmer is not simply about producing enough food to eat. In important ways, being a farmer in southern Zambia is a performance that requires the technical knowledge to negotiate the complex physical and social landscape of the region. From this perspective, a full butala of cassava would not have the same cultural significance as a butala of maize. If cassava is to become a vehicle for ending food insecurity in the region, it must be discursively constructed as an object that requires the same knowledge as maize. In other words, cassavaÕs successful production in southern Zambia must be seen by farmers in the region as the reflection of the work of a good farmer.
References ABC News (2002). Zambia rejects GMO maize. November 13, 2002. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/ s726176.htm on May 5, 2005. Brelsford W. V. (ed.) (1960). Handbook to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Published for the Federal Information Department. London, United Kingdom: Cassell and Company Ltd. Central Statistical Office (2003). Agriculture Analytical Report. Lusaka, Zambia: Republic of Zambia. Charles, N. and M. Kerr (1986). ‘‘Eating properly: The family and state benefit.’’ Sociology 20: 412–429. Cliggett, L. (2005). Grains from Grass: Aging, Gender, and Famine in Rural Africa. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Chizuni, J. (1994). ‘‘Food polices and food security in Zambia.’’ Nordic Journal of African Studies 3(1): 46–51. Colonial Office (1946). Colonial Reports Northern Rhodesia 1946. Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia: The Government Printer. Colonial Office (1951). Colonial Reports Northern Rhodesia 1951. Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia: The Government Printer. Copans, J. (1983). ‘‘The Sahelian drought: Social sciences and the political economy of underdevelopment.’’ In K. Hewitt (ed.), Interpretations of Calamity: From the Viewpoint of Human Ecology, (pp. 83–97). London, UK: Allen and Unwin. Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger. New York, NY: Praeger. Duncan, J. (1980). ‘‘The superorganic in American cultural geography.’’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 79(2): 181–198. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Maize, food insecurity, and the field of performance FEWS (Famine Early Warning System) (2002). Zambian food crisis to stretch beyond March. Retrieved from http:// www.fews.org on December 23, 2002. Ferguson, J. (1999). Expectations of Modernity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Franke, R. W. and B. H. Chasin (1980). Seeds of Famine: Ecological Destruction and the Development Dilemma in West Africa Sahel. Montclair. New Jersey: Allenheld and Osman. Freidberg, S. (2004). French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Goodman, D. and M. Redclift (1991). Refashioning Nature: Food, Ecology, and Culture. London, UK: Routledge. Haggblade S. and B. Zulu (2003). ‘‘Conference Paper No. 9: The recent cassava surge in Zambia and Malawi.’’ Paper presented at the InWEnt/IFPRI/NEPAD/CTA conference, Successes in African Agriculture, December 1–3, 2003. Pretoria, South Africa. Kapungwe, A. (2005). ‘‘Household food security and nutritional status in Zambia: Policy challenges.’’ African Insight 35: 36–43. Levi-Strauss, C. (1965). ‘‘Le triangle culinaire.’’ LÕArc 26: 19–29. Marter, A. (1978). ‘‘Cassava or maize: A comparative study of the economics of production and market potential of cassava and maize in Zambia.’’ University of Zambia working paper. McCann, J. (2005). Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop 1500–2000. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ministry of Agriculture and Co-Operatives (2004). National Agricultural Policy: 2004–2015. Lusaka, Zambia: Republic of Zambia Press.
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Miracle, M. (1966). Maize in Tropical Africa. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Mitchell, D. (1996). The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mintz, S. (1986). Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Office of Development and Planning (1966). First National Development Plan 1966–1970. Lusaka, Zambia: Republic of Zambia. Richards, A. (1932). Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe. London, UK: Geo. Routledge and Sons Ltd. Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay of Entitlements and Deprivation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Schein, L. (1999). ‘‘Performing modernity.’’ Cultural Anthropology 14(3): 361–395. Watson, J. and M. Caldwell (eds.) (2005). The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Watts, M. (1983). Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Woods, A. (ed.) (1990). The Dynamics of Agricultural Policy and Reform in Zambia. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. Address for correspondence: Nicholas Sitko Geography Department, University of Colorado, Guggenhiem Hall 260 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0260, USA Phone: +1-303-5326807; Fax: +1-303-5326807; E-mail:
[email protected]
