The Genius of Rural Agriculture

By Henry Kohn. Thoughts from an interview with the most prominent and reputable farmers in the northern villages.

Roaming through corn fields.

After discussing the use of fertilizer and its potential relationship to the recent emergence of diseases, I was looking forward to our interview with cultivators in Kuwde. The interview consisted of 3 cultivators and another man who was there as more of a translator. The first questions were concerned with the crop rotation and I took note of how pragmatic the system is and how it seems to be founded on a principle of sustainability. They are very knowledgeable about how different crops affect the soil and when to plant certain crops to take advantage of the nutrients and when to plant those crops that don’t require such nutrient rich soil. To prepare the soil for yams for example, okra is planted first and after yams, sorghum can be planted the next year. Peanuts and legumes, I learned, require comparatively less nutrients and can therefore be planted during the 4th year before the cycle returns to yams.

It was also explained that someone taking care of their land and using compost could have the same or even better yields than someone using fertilizer. Fertilizer is expensive for people in Kuwde and Farende and we wondered why someone would spend the money for fertilizer if compost worked just as well. From my earlier talk and the interview, there seem to be several reasons for using fertilizer. One has to do with efficiency and I believe that using fertilizer is less labor intensive so it makes it easier for older cultivators to work and continue to achieve sufficient crop yields without the labor of younger cultivators that journey south or to Nigeria with the hope that they will earn more money or earn a motorcycle for a season of cultivating. I also noted that even when using fertilizer, crops still need to be rotated and that continued planting of corn for example without peanuts between years could deteriorate the soil. I am wondering what the effects of using fertilizer are on the health of the soil and whether it is sustainable to be using fertilizer. I am also concerned that pesticides and other chemicals are growing in popularity which may affect the plants as well as water sources due to runoff.

The interview then turned to what is considered to be the greatest hindrance to crop yields which are monkeys that eat anything from corn to cotton. Although many things have been tried, nothing has been able to drive off the monkeys or prevent them from eating the crops. It was interesting to note that the monkey problem can be framed as a political problem as the monkeys came from reserves that were destroyed during the democratic moment in the 90s. The monkeys escaped the reserves and have since invaded fields in Kuwde and Farende but have left neighboring areas relatively untouched. This is why cotton can be cultivated in these areas and not in Kuwde, although I didn’t know before that it was possible to cultivate cotton in the North. On the subject of cash crops such as cotton, tea, coffee and cocoa, I wondered why there were no such plots for cash crops and almost everything is for sustenance farming. In my earlier meeting it was explained that a particular tea was tried, but that the yields were not sufficient and that it’s difficult to farm quality cash crops such as coffee and cocoa in these regions due to strict quality standards. I continue to wonder about how to reconcile sustenance farming with regional development as well as what can be done about the monkeys and the affects of fertilizer on the soil and the health of consumers.