Seeds are at the heart of a transformation process that affects more than two billion people worldwide. This study on smallholder farmers in Tanzania examines how local seed systems are anchored in the socio-cultural structures of smallholder life worlds. Using the example of seeds, the close interweaving of agricultural and social practice is traced and it is worked out how individual processes of modernisation brought in from outside have far-reaching consequences for smallholder coexistence. The study provides a concrete, detailed and differentiated account of everyday farming life and of how smallholder households deal with seeds. A particular focus is on seed exchange relationships and how these provide both social security and social cohesion in the study region. The study is based on extensive field research and intensive interviews with farmers, who also have their own say in the work.
Table of Content
Introduction.- Societal impact of gifting practices.- Research procedure.- Smallholder life in transition.- Seeds in Namtumbo: resource or social good?- Seed reference through the social networks.- ‘Those who sell seeds forget their humanity’.- ‘Agriculture is for those who have no education’. Group discussion with two women farmers and two men farmers in Namtumbo.- Concluding observations: Peasant survival in a monetized world.
About the author
Dr. Jonas Metzger conducts research on social transformation processes in Southern Africa and East Africa at the Institute of Sociology at Justus Liebig University in Giessen.
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