Discuss the different types of agricultural systems that exist in West Africa.

Answer Details

Agriculture in West Africa is carried out under several different systems, that is, recognised ways of organising the growing of crops and rearing of animals. The main systems are described below.

• Subsistence farming: the farmer produces mainly to feed the family, using simple tools (hoe and cutlass), family labour and small plots. Little or nothing is left over for sale, and output per person is low.
• Commercial (or plantation) farming: production is on a large scale for sale and profit, often specialising in one cash crop such as cocoa, oil palm or rubber. It uses hired labour, machinery and modern inputs, and is capital intensive.
• Shifting cultivation: a farmer clears and cultivates a piece of land until its fertility falls, then abandons it and moves to fresh land, allowing the old plot to recover naturally. It suits areas of plentiful land and low population.
• Bush fallowing (land rotation): similar to shifting cultivation but the farmer keeps the same homestead, cultivating a plot for a few years, leaving it fallow to regain fertility, and returning to it later.
• Mixed farming: the same farmer grows crops and rears animals together on the same holding, so that each supports the other (animals provide manure and draught power, while crop residues feed the animals).
• Crop rotation: different crops are grown in a planned sequence on the same land in successive seasons to maintain soil fertility and control pests, for example alternating a cereal with a legume.
• Pastoral farming (nomadic herding): the rearing of animals, especially cattle, sheep and goats, in which herders move with their animals in search of pasture and water, common in the drier savanna and Sahel.
• Cooperative farming: farmers pool land, labour or resources and farm together, sharing inputs, produce or proceeds.
• Irrigation farming: water is supplied artificially to the land, allowing cultivation in dry areas or dry seasons.

These systems often overlap in practice; a single region may combine, for example, bush fallowing for food crops with pastoral herding of livestock.