ABSTRACT
In an environment threatened by resource depletion and chronic shortages, adjacent peripheral regions pay much attention to how best they can develop their respective potential for interaction and mutual benefit. Watson's descriptions of the grassland fallow system and the woodland citemene technique, the two systems found in Mambwe land, are testimony of how cultivators on the plateau used to respond intelligently to the environmental constraints. The problem of Zambia's neglected rural sector is not just a matter of financial constraint at the centre or of farmers having second thoughts about borrowing. Decades of rural contact with capitalist forms of management, in the mines and on the commercial farms, had prepared rural Zambians for anything but a return to altruistic, collective efforts. The widespread enthusiasm for setting up cooperatives had been nothing more but one good way of making sure that the familiar system of migrant remittances did not disappear overnight.
