Strategies For Coping With Food Deficits In Rural Zimbabwe

Abstract

The resourcefulness of African smallholders in the face of recurrent food deficits is often overlooked by professionals and officials concerned with food security. Food scarcity has provoked a wide range of interventions by exogenous institutions but only rarely have the coping strategies maintained by small farmers been recognized as affording a basis for such action. Research has shown that rural production systems in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa incorporate a wide range of activities designed to reduce the incidence and impact of food shortage (e.g. Campbell, D.J., 1984; Walts, 1983a; Matiza et al. 1989). These activities are integral to rural production systems and are based on resources and relationships found in the social, economic and political institutions of society and on the generosity of the local physical environment.