Department of Geography, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Correspondence: Cecilia Scurrah-Ehrhart (email: cecilia@auberon.org)

Drawing on a case study from eastern Uganda, this paper describes how social and environmental
factors combine to affect the sustainability of both sorghum landraces and the farmers who depend
on it for food and income security. It delineates how changing regional patterns of agricultural production
and consumption, institutional neglect, economic hardship, natural resource degradation
and a labour supply crisis precipitated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, may be conspiring to place sorghum
landraces at risk of extinction and, thus, undermine already precarious livelihoods. The paper
therefore challenges the common assumption that marginalized rural women – by virtue of having
diverse varieties and species under their care – can be expected to conserve that diversity.

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