The Resources of the Niger Delta: Agriculture
Notes taken during the Ashton-Jones and Douglas survey in 1993/94:
The centre is a 250m² (50 x 500m) fenced compound, most of one side being a long, low, well built, well ventilated mud and thatch building that serves as the farm building and Pius's family home.
Caged rabbits: a male and female which cost N50 each from the Agricultural Development Programme in July. Feeds them on maize (bought), cassava, oilpalm fruit and green leaves. He has had two litters so far giving him 6 off-spring (2 male and 4 female) which he sold for N100 each.
Also goats: 7 adults (tethered, as they get through his temporary fence) and 3 juveniles; snails that are breeding successfully in grass in a cage above the ground; ducks using incubators as half shaded 44 gallon drums.
Indoors free-range poultry has succumbed to Newcastle disease; the manure used to go on the fish farm.
A fish farm of two ponds each 7 x 21m x 4m deep that he dug himself and through which he runs a stream in the wet season. He buys fingerlings from local fishermen and estimates that he has 370 fish in the ponds including catfish. Feeds them on: fish intestines, lizards, rats, cassava, papaya and poultry manure.
Grows: plantain, banana, papaya, cassava, cashew, citrus, "pear" and Guava; also fluted pumpkin on frames, where he uses ash to stop caterpillars.
Flooding in 1995 damaged the farm but repairs were underway in 1996.Intensive cultivation of the recent alluvial deposits exposed in the dry season
These are described in Chapter 6.4.5. The deposits are farmed for quick annual crops of cassava (which may spend 18 months in the ground elsewhere), sugar-cane and vegetables.
Extensive small-farmer paddy-rice farming.
Rice provides a good and equitable rural income. In most respects paddy-rice farming appears to be sustainable because annual flooding brings in nutrients, but it has all the potential problems of monoculture and rice rust (a fungus similar to wheat rust) on a small farm near Anyama.
A trend towards large-scale agro-industrial oil plan and rice projects
Such as Risonpalm and Niger Delta Basin Authority projects.
13.3.2 RICE AND OIL PALM ARE THE KEY CROPS FOR THE AGRICULTURAL FUTURE OF THE FRESH-WATER ECOZONE
There is no doubt that rice and oil palm are the key to the future agricultural productivity of the Niger Delta. Improved strains of rice already yield over 4000 kg of milled rice per hectare in Cameroon, compared with something in the order of less than 500 kg/ha around Anyama. Paddy-Rice culture is described in more detail in the following section on agriculture in the Brackish-Water ecozone.
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