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Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000
Sometime around 1500 A.D., an African farmer planted a maize seed imported fr...
maize
From pranuthraj
EPTD DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 97Environment and Production Technology DivisionInternational Food Policy Research Institute2033 K Street, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20006 U.S.A.January 2003
EPTD Discussion Papers contain preliminary material and research results, and are circulated prior to a full peer review in order to stimulate discussion and critical comment. It is expected that most Discussion Paperswill eventually be published in some other form, and that their content may also be revised.
MAIZE IN EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA:“SEEDS” OF SUCCESS IN RETROSPECT
Melinda Smale and Thom Jayne
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Significant contributions acknowledged from staff of the national Ministries of Agriculture in case study countries, CIMMYT, maize breeders and economists, IFPRI,Rockefeller Foundation, Egerton University/Tegemeo Institute, and Michigan StateUniversity’s activities in Eastern and Southern Africa, including the Food SecurityCooperative Agreement
ABSTRACT
This synthesis revisits the “maize success story” in Sub-Saharan Africa, drawingselectively from an extensive published literature about maize seed technical change andrelated policies. The review focuses on the countries of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, andMalawi, where maize is most important in the food economy, and refers to the period whenmaize became a dominant food crop through the 1990s. The term “success” is equivocal inthis case, both because of the difficult of establishing the appropriate counterfactual and because some of the policies that contributed to success in one period later led to decline.While the “seeds” themselves were the result of innovative, successful maize breeding, boom periods in maize production were episodic and the public investments in the controlledmarkets that bolstered them were not fiscally sustainable. Since maize will remain a crucial part of the food security equation even while the agricultural economies of the regiondiversify, continued investments in both maize research and market institutions, some of which must be public, are essential. The most vital question, however, is where the domestic political pressure to support these investments will originate—an issue related to governance.Keywords: maize, seed technical change, Sub-Saharan Africa, food policies
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