Letter: Letters: Keen on maize

From ROBERT LAMBERT

While welcoming the article by Jeremy Cherfas (Focus, 9 May) I would
like to challenge some of the points made concerning Zimbabwe.

Maize may be a continuing obsession of the Zimbabwean government but
small-scale farmers in the poorer lands are pretty keen on it too. Since
independence they have increased the area of maize planted to a little over
one million hectares, while the area of sorghum planted by the small-scale
farmers is only about one-fifth of this (data from Zimbabwe’s Statistical
Yearbook, 1989). One of the reasons why maize is preferred is because women
have much greater problems with the processing of sorghum than with maize.

It is important that the trials comparing traditional practices with
modern methods are not carried out simply to make the point that the ‘local
system works much better’. There is a danger that if the researchers’ minds
are already made up then the resulting empirical data will be suspect. I
hope these trials include an assessment on the impact on women.

Finally, the Zimbabwe government’s respect for empirical data is to
be welcomed, not lamented.

Robert Lambert University of East Anglia Norwich, Norfolk