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Food Production and Family Labour in Southern Malawi: the Shire Highlands and Upper Shire Valley in the Early Colonial Period

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.