Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/135

The Resources of the Niger Delta: Agriculture

13.2 AGRICULTURE IN THE LEM ECOZONE

13.2.1 FARMING IS A STRUGGLE AND THE STRUGGLE GETS WORSE

In the LEM ecozone, as indeed in most of Southern Nigeria, farmers farm to survive, growing subsistence crops which are primarily cassava, yams, and cocoyams, but also increasingly rice, maize and sweet potatoes. In addition essential soup crops are grown such as melon seed (Egusi), okra (draw soup), bitter-leaf, waterleaf, chillies and other spices. Surpluses are sold for cash either as raw or processed products.

Other crops are mainly grown (and sometimes in wild and semi-wild conditions) for local, national and/or international markets. These include plantains; oil, raffia and coconut palms; citrus, cocoa, kola, mango and rubber trees; and pineapples, pawpaws, ginger and groundnuts. Chickens and goats are reared also.

In addition to farming, farmers will exploit fish and forestry resources when they are able to do so. The latter include timber, bush-meat, rattan palm, and a wide variety of fruit and herbs.

Nigerian farmers respond well to market demand so that urban markets are always well supplied with agricultural produce. Generally farmers rely on family labour and do not have access to fertilisers. They depend on fallow periods to restore fertility or on clearing new agricultural land from forest. All their energy is expended upon production for immediate consumption or sale for necessary cash: surpluses cannot be stored because storage technology is limited. Very rarely is sufficient capital accumulated to allow for resources to be used for investing in the future, and it is interesting to note that farmers who plant tree crops tend to be old or young, having no families to worry about; otherwise tree planters are especially innovative or entrepreneurial men (rarely women).

The farmer in the LEM ecozone struggles, but the struggle gets worse because the human population is growing fast whilst the supply of good agricultural land is limited. In parts of the ecozone, rural population densities exceed 600 persons per square kilometre; there is no forestland left to clear, so that fallow periods are being reduced and thus soil conditions are declining rapidly. The farmer works harder and harder for lower yields. A common scenario is where an entire landscape is converted to fallow land dominated by the exotic weed Chromalina ordorata (Akintola weed in the West, Awolowa Weed in the East), and patches of low yielding cassava which may demand up to seven weeding rounds in a year because a decent canopy does not form. The only trees are the fire tolerant oil palms and colonising Anthocleista spp. with the occasional Mango tree marking the site of an abandoned homestead.

In its defence, it must be said that Chromalina is a good fallow weed in so much as it is able to grow fast and produce large quantities of biomass. However it discourages the establishment of other plants and especially tree species (it is dreaded by foresters). Nonetheless, Chromalina seems to impede the spread of the grass weed Imperata cylindrica, a notorious Southeast Asian weed which is devastating to soil fertility and which is already apparent in Nigeria: Chromalina may be the lesser of two evils.

This change, from a fertile and biodiverse landscape to one of low biodiversity and declining fertility can be very sudden. It happens as human population densities in a given area pass a critical point, so that older people can truly remember better and easier times, and do not know what has hit them. More thoughtful farmers realise that

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