‘We are not eating our own food here’: food security and the cash economy in Eastern Uganda

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper we explore changes in agriculture and provisioning in Bunyole County, located in Tororo District on Uganda's eastern border. Since the 1980s parts of the region have experienced a ‘rice boom’ based on the cultivation of paddy rice in irrigated schemes and seasonal swamps. During the same period, the cultivation of cotton, the traditional cash crop, has declined precipitously. Many households in the region are no longer self‐sufficient in food, and food security is a common concern. Drawing both on anthropological field studies in contrasting parts of Bunyole County (1992–3 and 2001–2), as well as long‐term field research in Bunyole that started in 1969, we examine changes in farming systems and land use, in the gender‐based division of labour in family production, and in the interdependence of families and individuals as expressed in social exchange. We trace the increasing importance of trade in food crops of all sorts and in particular the significance for the local rice economy of an emerging year‐round market for agricultural labour. Finally we examine the developing and changing discourse about ‘food’—as a commercial, a nutritional and a symbolic commodity—and the corresponding discourse about ‘money’. We see food security—at household level and in regions—as an outcome of the strategic actions of individuals. However, we also argue that local debates about food security reflect a changing relationship between ‘food’ and ‘money’—a change that involves both social and productive relationships. In eastern Bunyole these changes are expressed in terms of the new rice economy but, we suggest, the changes are more fundamental, and can be seen in many parts of Uganda. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.