Land in many African societies is central to identity, wealth and belonging. People with more land are wealthier and more respected. People without land are impoverished, or even can no longer claim belonging to the places in which they were brought up. And in some societies the essential importance of land for identity and belonging is combined also with its economic value. Land means that crops can be produced and sold, livestock supported, children can be educated and/or married, houses built and so on.
In Meru in northern Tanzania, land as an asset valued for social recognition and land as the basis of economic production for coffee have gone hand in hand for decades. And yet in the last generation coffee prices and production have plummeted. Coffee bushes have been uprooted. What once sustained 85% of families is now grown by a mere quarter of them and sold by smaller numbers than that. Instead people are investing their time and efforts into the formal economy, seeking education and employment, and the informal economic opportunities that proliferate in the nearby, and encroaching town of Arusha. What happens to the value and meaning of land when its economic importance is so radically transformed?
Meru is one of the better studied regions in the country, with precisely the right climate, views and field conditions to attract keen researchers. It is known for classic works such as Neumann’s Imposing Wilderness, Spear’s Mountain Farmers (from which the title of the present paper derives) and the late Rolf Larsson’s PhD. It is also the place where I was brought up and lived as a child and to which I remain attached and belong as an adult. Drawing on these published works and unpublished works from researchers, my own fieldwork in the area and life experience I explore in this paper the changing meaning of land as a component of wealth and well-being for Meru families. I show that there has been substantial disinvestment in agricultural assets, and investment in other forms of income earning capacity, particularly education, that makes this region stand out from others in the country. This has been accompanied by new forms of wealth investment (in houses) and selective sale of once valuable farmland and livestock, to enable more lucrative investments.