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| Title: | Muddles in the Maize Fields and Labour Migration in Southern Africa: A Critique of the Conjectures of Dr. Low |
| Author: | Guma, X.P. |
| Year: | 1993 |
| Periodical: | Eastern Africa Economic Review |
| Volume: | 9 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 203-218 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Southern Africa |
| Subjects: | food shortage food production Economics and Trade Labor and Employment Urbanization and Migration Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology |
| Abstract: | This paper offers a critique of Dr. A.R.C. Low's farm-household economic explanation of the malaise in southern African agriculture. The essence of Low's argument is that peasant agriculture in southern Africa, indeed Africa as a whole, is constrained primarily by a shortage of labour. This outcome is problematic, because it gives rises to persistent deficits of food, even in countries such as Swaziland and Zambia where the natural environment favours food production. By treating deficits of food as the corollary of inadequate crop production by peasants, and by postulating that food deficits are always automatically problematic, Low is able to discuss agricultural development in southern Africa primarily in terms of the 'new' household economics, omitting commercial (capitalist) agriculture and its effects on peasant agriculture from his analysis. The author draws attention to the flaws in the analytical model which forms the basis for Low's conjectures. In particular, he argues that analysis in terms of the 'new' household economics yields a model whose solution is indeterminate. He also deals with two issues for which Low adduces concrete evidence: labour migration and 'surplus' land, and pastoralists and their cattle. In each case, Low's analysis is replete with contradictions and plain misrepresentation of both received theory, reality and other people's analyses. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |