ABSTRACT
The agronomy department at Cairns has contributed greatly to the transfer of farming knowledge and helped in the integration of the modern and traditional knowledge of growing rapoko. A market opportunity for traditional small grains like rapoko, peanuts and pumpkins was slowly emerging. On the one hand, Cairns Foods, through their agronomists, provided the Chinyika community with technical advice in growing the traditional and horticultural crops. On the other hand, the Chinyika people provided Cairns Foods with a wealth of knowledge for purposes of product development. The people of Chinyika did arise to democratic communal effect. The Chinyika story constitutes the Southern effecting of integral polity, thereby rooted in nature and community. It is the Karanga people, along with the Baremba, who feature centrally in the Chinyika story. The colonization of Zimbabwe, for the primary instigators of Chinyika story, Paul Muchineripi and Steve Kada, by the British, had the profoundly debilitating effect of an imposed Western conventional economic system.
