GM or death

"...One of the main sticking points with GM foods has been the long-term health effects of bioengineering on consumers and the land on which it is grown. However, the capacity of such seeds to enduringly fulfill promises of improved yields is rarely questioned.

Moreover, agribusiness firms have often promoted genetically modified organisms as the next hunger-quenching “Green Revolution.” Based on the generally accepted notion that GM crops would bring enhanced productivity, Africa and GM foods seemed to be an ideal match: the continent “ravaged by hunger” is given high-yielding crops. But a problem arose when Africans themselves began to challenge this relationship.

"In an industrial society getting a meal is an interval or a conclusion to the day’s work; in a society [that is pre-industrial], getting a meal is the day’s work."

The debate over whether to accept or refuse GM foods in Zambia is inextricably connected to the symbolism of food. The late New Zealand anthropologist Raymond Firth’s observation above offers a useful point of departure. Firth is correct—food production and procurement are essentially different activities in industrial and agrarian societies. Therefore, the meanings associated with food are likely to be dissimilar, as well, and certainly Zambia is no exception. However, modern Zambia, along with most other countries of the world, must account for both urban and rural modes of labor and production, which coexist and interact through both meanings and markets within its national borders.

At least 60 percent of Zambians live in nonurban areas. While many rural people rely on urban wage-remittances, severance payments, and other forms of imported income, the vast majority of Zambians subsist on locally cultivated staples such as maize, cassava, and finger millet. Rural residents typically produce the daily meals they consume through carefully planned year-round agricultural labor, and thus are intimately involved in the precarious process of food cultivation and harvest. Not surprisingly, therefore, among the attributes of highly valued foods is the ability to generate consistent and reliable results. Foods laden with the richest symbolic meanings are most likely to be “traditional” ones that are known and trusted locally.

Defining food in rural, agrarian areas at first appears deceptively simple: food is what fills a person’s stomach, food is what fuels strength for work. Symbolic subtleties, however, emerge upon consideration of which foods fulfill these requirements. Moreover, it is not just the type of food, but also the processes by which it is prepared, for whom, and at which times, that shape value. In the Luapula region, and throughout northern Zambia, the most significant food is nshima, a thick porridge made from maize, cassava, and sometimes finger millet, that is eaten at almost every meal. Consuming several hearty portions of nshima means that a person will be “satisfied,” which in turn results in strength for work. The concept of being satisfied (ukwikuta in Chibemba, the most widely spoken language of northern Zambia) implies more than merely replacing emptiness with food. To eat an adequate amount of locally relevant food “delivers one from hunger” or “chases the hunger” (ukutûka nsala). Nshima is considered so significant to the Zambian diet that a common complaint following the consumption of several ears of roasted maize or a hearty plate of peeled and boiled sweet potatoes sans the basic staple dish is, “Alas, we are dying of hunger. We have not had a bite to eat all day.”

Nshima in Zambia is often discussed in terms of the energy and gastronomic satisfaction that it confers upon individuals, yet it provides something more significant still: a sense of social coherence. Eating is a social activity, with nshima the anchor of every meal. Raymond Firth underscores this notion of food as socially cohesive. He discusses food production and meanings among Tikopian islanders of the South Pacific as a collaboration between the pragmatic and symbolic:

"The relationship of people to food in Tikopia is strongly pragmatic, empirical. They want to eat it, they are anxious about the supply of it, they organize a great deal of their activity around getting it and making it ready for eating. They also are very interested in the idea of food, intellectually and emotionally. They talk a lot about food; they enjoy their own foods cooked in their own way; they are very hospitable in pressing food upon visitors; and very pleased when visitors enjoy it too. With all this the Tikopia have quite an elaborate set of symbolic concepts in which food figures—either being symbolized by other things or itself symbolizing activities and relationships … strictly speaking there are no symbolic objects—there are only symbolic relationships."

Similarly, the symbolic relationships invested in and reflected by important foods are key to understanding the emotional responses of people in places like Zambia to genetically modified foods.

"There are objects or substances which are not edible by their physical nature, because they cannot be masticated or cannot be digested or their flavour is antipathetic: earth, wood, grubs, some marine fauna, etc. Then there are others which are inedible because of their social nature. …" - Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private

Now, to return to an assertion presented earlier: what makes food bad to eat even when it is gastronomically edible? Among the variables that affect such a morality of consumption are time, place, and social standing. Certain foods may not be appropriate, or might even be considered temporarily unpalatable during episodes of mourning, rites of initiation, or due to one’s age. Groups, rank, and gender are further delineated and variously amalgamated through the idiom of food. It is often through eating that social relationships are realized and symbolically represented.

Matrilineal clan aggregates in northern Zambia are often united under the banner of foods and animals. Ubowa (mushroom), ubwali (nshima), and isabi (fish) are commonly found group titles. While in some circumstances the consumption of the clan emblem is prohibited to members, clan names can also foster cooperation and familiarity among groups. Certain clans maintain special joking relationships that involve mutual obligation and the social leeway to act especially rudely toward each other without incurring the same ire as one would in typical interactions. These relationships are founded on the complementary nature of the clan names. For example, members of the mushroom and rain clans are “joking cousins” because mushrooms cannot grow without rain; likewise, the fish and crocodile clans are paired because crocodiles subsist on fish.

Food is also used as an idiom to represent and transform interethnic relations in Zambia. Comparable to many other practices throughout the world, people are sometimes grouped by the foods they are purported to eat. An example is found in the Bemba proverb “abalya mbulu, balapalamana,” which translates loosely as “those who eat water monitors (a large species of lizard) gravitate together.” In a similar manner, ethnic Bemba and Ngoni have in part transformed their previously hostile rivalry into a peaceful joking relationship through gastronomic teasing. Members of each group playfully mock the other for their respective “repulsive” culinary habits. Bembas are cajoled by Ngonis for their atrocious willingness to eat monkeys, while Ngonis are mercilessly harassed for their “disgusting” habit of regularly consuming a certain type of rat. This manner of mischievous banter is so pervasive that Bembas and Ngonis are iconographicaly represented in house paintings and public murals as monkeys and rats throughout Zambia. As shown by interethnic and clan joking relationships, “fighting” via ethnic foodways can diffuse tension and invite sociability. As elsewhere, food in Zambia bestows richer sustenance than merely the sum of its constituent nutrients. Nourishment is endowed upon the social consumer through the symbolic relationships that are both represented and conferred via food. Such messages and meanings are, of course, as various as the foods that are eaten. Concepts appear especially diverse when comparing areas where food is bought and where it is harvested. However, I argue that the processes that pervade the social content appropriated through food are very much the same in urban and rural regions. These include communicating through symbolic representation, fighting for political leverage, and demanding the right to accept (and reject) foods."

excerpt from “GM or Death”: Food and Choice in Zambia