Meme Prompt

Minor Project Question: “What role do traditional crops and cropping systems have today in Africa? Are they still useful?”

In depth exploration: How has shifting cultivation been used traditionally and how is it being used now? Why has it changed?

Brittany Sandoval, Maci New, Fatim Keita, Kenny Holbrook

 

Shifting cultivation is a form of agriculture used especially in tropical Africa. Shifting cultivation is a process that consists of an area of ground being cleared of vegetation and cultivated for a few years. It is then abandoned for a new area until its fertility has been naturally restored. This process is one of the earliest forms of traditional cropping systems used in Africa.

Historically, the continent of Africa was mostly sporadically inhabited, so farmers were able to use large areas of fertile land without interference. In this custom the farmers would choose the most fertile lands for cultivating their crops and then moved on to other areas after a couple of years, as they began to observe deterioration in the fertility of the soils and yields of the crops, they relocate to areas that were more fertile. This farming method is called shifting cultivation, also known as slash and burn. Farmers were capable of providing adequate food staples and various goods that satisfied the farmers' daily needs during most periods throughout the year while sustaining the area’s soil fertility for a longer period (Harrison, 1987). Therefore, many of Africa’s farmers are practicing small-scale sustainable farming methods today as they did thousands of years ago.

Although shifting cultivation is still practiced today some changes have been made over time. A main reason why shifting cultivation has changed is due to the decrease of availability of land. Population continues to increase within many African countries and that increases the demand for land within the environment used for living space. Shifting cultivation requires that you have enough land in order to alternate the usage of farm land. Due to the fact that land increasingly became limited people were forced to find alternative ways to cultivate the land in a way in which required less land mass. An alternative to shifting cultivation is  taungya system of large-scale forest plantation establishment used by forest departments, in which food crops are inter-planted with trees in the early years of the plantation(Okigbo,1981).

Today, traditional shifting cultivation is still used but mainly only by rural African populations. These populations are virtually all of low socioeconomic status (in poverty) and thus their access to agricultural inputs is extremely limited (Ickowitz, 2006).

Citations/sources:

Ickowitz, Amy. 2006. Shifting cultivation and deforestation in tropical Africa: critical reflections. Development and Change 37 (3): 599-626. [Internet]. [Cited 20 Apr 2017]. Available from:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227634471_Shifting_Cultivation_and_Deforestation_in_Tropical_Africa_Critical_Reflections

Harrison, Paul. “The Greening of Africa: Breaking Through In the Battle for Land And Food”. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin, 1987. Web. 14 APR 2017.   https://www.jstor.org/stable/161034?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

OKIGBO, B.N. 1981. Alternatives to shifting cultivation. Ceres (FAO), 15 (6): 41-45. Rome.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/r5265e/r5265e06.htm