ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the land question in its historical and contemporary phases in order to consider interrelationships of food production and nutrition with the status of women, internal class formation and international interests. It illustrates struggles over resources in one area of Zaire. The landscape, climate, soils, farming systems, and culture of eastern Kivu are immensely varied. In households where men consume large amounts of banana beer, gender differences in nutrition are likely to be especially pronounced, with men getting far more calories’ and other nutrients than women in proportion to work energy expended. As in most African societies, Zairian women are active in the production of food crops, both for home use and for sale. Both men and women were subjected to forced labour corvees to provide food for workers in European enterprises, to build roads and carry burdens. Peasants producers, most of whom are women who produce mainly food crops, are viewed as “traditional subsistence” cultivators.
