Food Production and Family Labour in Southern Malawi: the Shire Highlands and Upper Shire Valley in the Early Colonial Period
Food Production and Family Labour in Southern Malawi: the Shire Highlands and Upper Shire Valley in the Early Colonial Period
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马拉维南部的粮食生产和家庭劳动：殖民时期早期的夏尔高地和上夏尔河谷
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发表时间：
1982
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
M. Vaughan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
M. Vaughan
非洲殖民地历史学家相对较少关注农民耕种者的粮食生产机制，但了解粮食生产系统及其所需的劳动力对于理解殖民时期的农村变迁和分层至关重要。在马拉维南部的夏尔高地，二十世纪初的生态干扰和土地异化意味着，如果要避免饥饿，就需要加强粮食生产的劳动强度。不同群体在保留家庭劳动力方面的不同成功是这一时期经济分化的一个主要因素。一些群体能够采用新的耕作模式，加强劳动，从而继续生产剩余粮食，从而避免了全面饥荒。只要能在现有土地上加强劳动，就可以解决一定程度的土地短缺问题。与此同时，在上郡山谷，土地并不短缺，但对粮食安全的担忧对于决定引入棉花作为经济作物的结果至关重要。这个容易发生干旱的地区要实现粮食安全，需要在一年中的大部分时间里部署家庭劳动力从事粮食生产，包括在旱季种植第二季作物和后备作物。棉花的引入很大程度上是失败的，因为其回报并不能弥补粮食生产劳动力的损失。
The mechanics of food production by peasant cultivators have received relatively little attention from historians of colonial Africa, and yet a knowledge of food production systems and the labour they require is crucial to any understanding of rural change and stratification in the colonial period. On the Shire Highlands of Southern Malawi, ecological disturbance and the alienation of land in the early years of the twentieth century meant that an intensification of labour on food production was needed if hunger was to be avoided. The differential success of various groups in holding on to their family labour was a major factor making for economic differentiation in this period. Full-scale famine was avoided by the ability of some groups to adopt new cropping patterns, intensify labour, and thus continue to produce a food surplus. A degree of land shortage could be accommodated as long as labour could be intensified on the available land. In the Upper Shire valley at the same time, there was little shortage of land, but the concern for food security there was important in determining the outcome of the introduction of cotton as a cash-crop. The attainment of food security in this area, which was prone to drought, involved the deployment of family labour on food production over much of the year, including the planting of second crops and back-up crops in the dry season. The introduction of cotton was largely a failure because the returns did not compensate for the loss of labour on food production.