Tanga Region, Tanzania, is an area of persistent rural poverty with a long history of drought, floods, food shortages, famine, and social and economic disruption. Though farmers have been cultivating the land therefor hundreds of years, they have consistently been unable to supply adequate food for the region's inhabitants. In "Challenging Nature," Philip Porter examines eighteen farming communities to understand what the farmers there know about their environment and which historical and economic factors play into the lack of food security.
Porter first began work on this project in...