ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to a small corner of the Eastern Plateau of Zambia, but the issues that identify are mirrored in other villages all over Eastern and Southern Africa. To begin to understand these issues it makes sense to seriously consider particular people and their particular problems. The land of the Eastern Plateau of Zambia is mostly flat with low hills. The chapter argues that the Zambian villagers have created an ideal for food provisioning which links food security to a particular kind of moral performance. In the utopia of food provisioning, meat should be purchased rather than provided by the household. Food provisioning is constructed within a moral economy. Ideally, the cash economy supplies money for inputs to grow enough maize for the whole year. More policies fit with the 'farming as a business' model – hunger is a temporary effect that will be removed by further exposure to market pressures.
