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| Title: | From seasonal income to daily diet in a partially commercialized rural economy (southern Cameroon) |
| Author: | Guyer, J. |
| Book title: | Seasonal variability in Third World agriculture: the consequences for food security |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Pages: | 137-150 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Cameroon |
| Subjects: | Beti household income food seasonality |
| Abstract: | This chapter suggests that understanding the dynamics of multiple and changing income sources in partially commercialized rural economies may be fruitfully addressed through seasonal analysis. This is illustrated by an analysis of the case of the Beti of southern Cameroon, using data taken from two consumption surveys carried out in 1954 and 1964-1965, and from the author's own budget study of 1975-1976. Among the Beti, the smoothing of expenditures over the seasons, in an economy heavily dominated by a highly seasonal major export crop, cocoa, is achieved in two major ways: (1) self-provisioning in kind, mainly by women, using cultivation, storage, and marketing techniques and strategies that minimize seasonal peaks and troughs in the basic staples, and (2) women's provisioning through the cash nexus, devoting a high proportion of their income to food, augmented from men who increase their transfers to women during the cash-income troughs. In addition, women do some seasonal saving and dissaving of cash income. The result is a diet of remarkable seasonal stability. This dynamic is not deducible from income levels alone. It depends on the constraints and possibilities open to both men and women in relation to the production system, the market structure, and each other. Notes, ref. |