THE POLITICS OF FAMINE PREVENTION: ECOLOGY, REGIONAL PRODUCTION AND FOOD COMPLEMENTARITY IN WESTERN RWANDA

Abstract

THIS ARTICLE reviews the results of a short-term field investigation in Western Rwanda, together with a critical appreciation of historical research into the region's food supply system. The field visit took place in January and February 1982,1 and could be labelled 'fairly-quick-and-fairly-clean'.2 Its purpose was to collect primary information to enable the drafting of a proposal for longer-term research. The results, presented in the first part of this article, are set in perspective by way of an analysis of present-day data on interand intra-regional food flows. Such data, somewhat to my surprise, are not available in respect of the country's current food production capacity. Recorded information relates nearly always to pre-colonial and early colonial times alone. Historians who present data on food flows do so in the context of a wider interest in, for instance, the nature and scope of pre-colonial and early colonial trade patterns. That food transactions are of secondary importance to such researchers does not entitle me to call their approach into question. Indeed, as I shall argue, food transactions between ecological zones are seen by me as epiphenomena of wider commercial interests. What I do query, however, is the historian's recourse to simple equilibrium models. 3 Such models too frequently incorporate simplistically the notion of an automatic transfer of supplies from surplus-producing to