Document(s) 7 of 17

The subarid savanna zone (Fig. 18) extends from Dakar to include much of central Senegal, central Mali, southern Burkina Faso and Niger, most of northern Nigeria, and central Chad. In Sudan, it widens to include a large area of the central rainlands, and some of the irrigation schemes on the Blue Nile. A large area in the north and part of the Rift Valley south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, the Karamoja District of northeast Uganda, together with a limited area in the Kenyan Rift Valley and to the east of Nairobi, and part of central Tanzania are included. Most of western Zimbabwe and part of southern Zambia and southern Angola are also in this zone.

The predominant upland soils in this zone are alfisols, but there is considerable local variation, including dune sands in parts of West Africa, vertisols around Lake Chad and in Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan, and oxisols and entisols in southern Africa (see Fig. 5).

The vegetation in much of this zone consists of mixed combretaceous and Acacia tree savanna, with Faidherbia albida and Hyphaene thebiaca as indicator species. These species, as well as Parkia spp., are protected and used for browse. Mango is planted where ground water is not too deep. Grasses include Cenchrus ciliaris, C. biflorus, Eragrostis tremula, and Pennisetum pedicillatum (Okigbo 1986, p. 98).

This is an important zone agriculturally, with heavy concentrations of population throughout much of both western and eastern Africa. In this zone, the millet system described in Chapter 5 is found on the lighter soils, but sorghum is the dominant crop on the heavier soils, with maize becoming increasingly important, particularly in eastern and southern Africa. Cowpeas, groundnuts, and cotton are also grown. Many cultivators own cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, and horses.

Senegal

The commercialization of the area began about 1850, and it has accelerated in the last forty years. The traditional fallow system has been replaced by a permanent cropping system, with groundnuts as the dominating crop, which is unsurpassed in the area in terms of returns per hectare and per hour of work. The guiding principle of land use is a simple one. There have to be sufficient cereals for food (about 0.25 ha per person yielding 200 kg at a yield expectation of 0.8 t/ha). 90-day pearl millet supplies early food, and 130-day sorghum supplies food later in the season. The rest is planted with groundnuts. Some rice is grown in valley bottoms. Farmers now tend to replace millet with early-maturing maize, which yields much more, produces green maize as food even earlier than millet, requires less threshing work, and no bird-scaring, and is simpler to store.

Most farmers own some cattle in addition to goats, sheep, donkeys, chickens, and perhaps a horse. The livestock are fed on communal grazing land and crop residues, and browse, including Faidherbia albida, is also fed in the dry season. The livestock are often herded by hired Fulani herdsmen, and are used for up to about 100 days work in the fields per year. Horse-drawn passenger vehicles, which are also used as taxis, are common in this area.

Burkina Faso

Matlon (1984), a regional economist with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), carried out on-farm tests on a stratified random sample of farms in two villages in each of three distinct agroecological zones. One of these pairs of villages, with about 750-mm annual rainfall, comes into the subarid zone. The stratification of the 25–30 farmers participating in each village was defined by the ownership or nonownership of animal-powered equipment for cultivation. ICRISAT's objectives were to test "improved" technologies (mainly high-yielding varieties) produced on a local research station under farmers' conditions to determine their technical adaptation and acceptance or rejection by the farmers. As in Senegal, sorghum is the dominant crop in this area, with millet important on the lighter soils. Under normal farmer management, the local sorghum varieties gave average yields of 189 kg/ha on the shallow plateau soils, and about 600 kg/ha on the slightly deeper soils further down the slope or toposequence. Some tests were carried out in 1981 comparing the local and some improved sorghum varieties with the local recommended practices of plowing before planting and 100 kg fertilizer (14 kg/ha N, 23 P₂O₅, 15 K₂O).

The results (summarized in Table 6) suggest that there was little yield advantage for the farmers in growing the improved varieties using their normal management on the plateau and upper or mid slopes, and only a small advantage with E35-1 on the lower slope. The extremely low yields (between 144 and 318 kg/ha) on the plateau soils, which are the most widespread, with all varieties under farmer management, and with all except the hybrid CSH5 under improved management, are striking. It would be most interesting to know how low the yield must fall before the farmer decides the crop is not worth growing. With improved management (plowing and fertilizing), CSH5 gave a higher yield on the plateau, and both E35-1 and CSH5 gave small yield increases on the mid and lower slopes. Interestingly, some farmers decided to use farmyard manure as well as fertilizers in the tests, and these farmers achieved gross margins with the improved variety E35-1 nearly double those with the local variety.

Table 6. Mean grain yields (kg/ha) of local and improved sorghums by position down the toposequence at two levels of management, Nakomtenga and Nabitenga villages, Burkina Faso, 1981.
	Farmer management				Improved management
	E35-1	38-3	CSH5	Local	E35-1	38-3	CSH5	Local
Plateau Upper slope Midslope Lower slope	– 268 685 810	318 305 311 516	144 773 537 602	189 605 626 606	– 966 1405 1389	185 1048 915 1106	813 1256 1369 1202	273 1101 1197 1150
Source: Matlon (1984, table 3).

With fewer inputs, the local variety often gave a higher gross margin than the improved one. Matlon (1984, p. 108) summarized part of an economic analysis of these results as follows.

The results ... clearly demonstrated the high risks associated with fertilizer use in semi-arid conditions under farmers' management. Thus, even with mean financial returns of 77% and 42% in the high- and middle-rainfall zones, the percentages of fields where incremental yields did not cover subsidized fertilizer costs were 44 and 70 for the local varieties. Costing fertilizer at its unsubsidized price found average negative returns for all cases except improved sorghum varieties in the high-rainfall zone and under lowland conditions in the lowest-rainfall zone. An important question left unanswered was whether the recommended dose (100 kg/ha) of the available NPK fertilizer was the optimum dose. A farmers' test was subsequently designed to address this question.

Lang and Cantrell (1984) have described some of the work of the Purdue Farming Systems Unit in Burkina Faso. Their principal findings were the following.

In two villages on the central plateau, and in half of the sample villages on the edge of the plateau, the farmers are clearly oriented toward subsistence. They claim to ignore price in cropping and in deciding when to sell their crops. Their sales are strictly residual, prompted only by "urgent need," regardless of the market price. If, as harvest approaches, their stocks are adequate, they sell grain to purchase small ruminants, which are kept for sale during lean years. The data documented the farmers' reliance on livestock sales as a principal source of revenue to purchase grain. Thus, the farmers are not, by plan, part of the cash economy.

Although the principal grain crop in all three villages is millet, farmers would like to plant more sorghum because sorghum stores twice as long (3–4 years) as millet (1–2 years) and, during good years, yields more than millet. They plant less than desired quantities because the variability in yield of sorghum and, therefore, production risks are much higher than those associated with millet.

Labour, as has frequently been observed in other studies, is often a binding constraint during the first weeding but is slightly more available during the second weeding.

Millet plantings are highly and consistently correlated with the number of active labourers/household. Sorghum plantings are confined to land that is more fertile or has better water retention.

Use of draft animals is profitable in the land-abundant zone because of intensification effects, and on the central plateau where extensification is possible. On the plateau, no intensification effects were detected.

In two villages, the farmer-managed millet trials showed statistically significant (P < 0.05) yield responses to phosphate in the seed pocket and to tied ridges. The most promising treatment was a combination of the two techniques. For one village, average yield increases easily covered cash costs and provided returns to labour of about 28 CFA/work hour [about US $0.10].

Nigeria

A particularly important feature for the purposes of the present study, and indeed for agricultural development throughout Africa, is the sustained intensification of smallholder rainfed agriculture that has been achieved in some areas of high population density. For example, Grove (1961, p. 125) has described the land-use situation in a heavily populated area.

Northern Katsina: Dense settlement, land impoverishment and emigration — Towards the central districts of the Kano region population densities increase, and all the inner agricultural zones surrounding villages have a greater radius. The proportion of village lands under yearly cultivation is larger, and at some critical figure of population density the outermost zone of bush fallow farming is eliminated from the land-use pattern as a continuous feature. This critical figure varies with the soil conditions but it is probably of the order of 150 or 200 to the square mile [58 to 77 people/km²]. Where population densities are lower than this, land use is commonly unspecialized; land is not used for different purposes according to its inherent capabilities, but any particular patch may be under woodland at one time, rough-grazing at another, cropped for a few years and then abandoned. In more heavily settled areas, there is a closer relation of the land-use pattern to soil conditions.

The 1967 population was made up of 386 men, 399 women, and 610 children, 1395 in all, of whom 1103 lived in the walled village (Hausa: gari) and 292 in dispersed farm houses; 1226 people (88%) made up 171 farming-units each headed by a farmer, and the remaining 69 people made up the households of the four ruling families (Hausa: masusarauta). Half the population was in farming units of 6–10 people, but as many as half the "heads of farming units" were single-handed farmers. Four farming units were much larger, with 20–30 members each. The main crops were sorghum, pearl millet (both early and late varieties), cowpeas, and groundnuts. Subsidiary crops included tobacco, sweet potato, cassava, local vegetables, rice, henna, hemp, and various tree fruits and seeds (particularly locust beans, Parkia clappertoniana).

Hill (1972, p. 20) makes the important observation that the manured farms around the village are continuously cultivated, normally without any fallow period, even though the farmers have access to bush farms and uncultivated land within a short distance. She describes the manuring practices.

Despite the fact that land is plentiful, individual farmers prefer to concentrate their farming in the manured zone, and some of the most successful of all farmers do not trouble to cultivate any bush-farms. The main types of manure are compound sweepings, including the droppings of small livestock (sheep, goats and donkeys), which are of fundamental importance in this economy, and cattle dung which is partly provided by cattle owned (or cared for) by Batagarawa people ..., partly by non-resident Fulani pastoralists who are paid for bringing their cattle to graze on the farms after harvest. Imported chemical fertilizers are very popular, and increasingly applied, but are as yet of little importance relative to natural manures, including latrine manure.

Norman et al. (1981, p. 52) point out that the traditional cropping system in many parts of the West African savanna involves the permanent cultivation of some fields, usually near the house compound, and the maintenance of soil fertility through manuring. Fields further away are cultivated for a few years, after which soil fertility is restored primarily through fallowing. The fields near the compound are usually common fields used for food crops, whereas the fields further away that are cultivated intermittently may be used more for cash crops. They describe recent changes in the system.

Increasing land shortages concomitant with rising population densities are resulting in an increase in the production of permanently cultivated fields, and the remaining fields are being left fallow for progressively shorter periods.... Traditionally livestock herders and sedentary crop farmers have had some symbiotic relationships in which manure for fields is an important element.... Although with the problems of continuing this complementary relationship in the face of progressive decreases in grazing land, there is also the question of whether such a relationship can provide the increasing amounts of organic fertilizer required to maintain soil fertility. It has been noted that, apart from a few exceptional areas such as that around Kano in northern Nigeria ..., the decrease in yields has not been forestalled. This problem has been of particular concern in the francophone countries, where the introduction of animal traction has been seen as a means of alleviating such problems.

In general there appears to have been an assumption on the part of researchers responsible for developing improved technology that all fields are viewed in the same way by farmers. The above observations concerning the "ring cultivation" system [see Fig. 7] appear to repudiate this assumption, although the implications for development of relevant technology are unclear.

One would expect, for example, that the fertility would be an important issue with reference to fields close to residential areas, which are also likely to have increased Striga [a parasitic weed of cereals] infestation due to the continuous cropping of cereal crops. On the other hand, labour efficiency is likely to be more important in more remote fields, but mechanization problems are likely to be greater there because fields often have not been adequately destumped.

Mixed cropping is an important practice throughout the savanna, but this has sometimes been criticized as possibly reducing production and labour efficiency. Labour requirements and yields for sole and mixed crops at Sokoto in northern Nigeria have been measured by Norman et al. (1979). Although yield per hectare of each crop was reduced when the crops were mixed (Table 7), the net value of the production and the net return to labour from mixed cropping was increased about 25% in this study. In addition, the farmer's food security would be improved in case of loss of one of the crops.

Table 7. Comparison of sole and mixed crops on rainfed land (annual average rainfall, 752 mm), Sokoto, Northern Nigeria.
	Sole crops	Mixed crops
Labour (person-hours/ha) Annual Labour peak period	425.8 232.5	485.6 238.0
Yield (kg/ha) Millet Sorghum Groundnut Cowpea	736 652 429 –	686 122 188 56
Source: Norman et al. (1979).

Cameroon and Chad

A few people in this area may also grow early finger millet to obtain an early harvest after the "hungry gap."

Sudan

Because there does not appear to be any provision for rotational cropping or the maintenance of soil fertility, most of this land is cropped continuously for a few years until it is exhausted. The tractors may then be moved to a new site, sometimes as much as 90 km away, on a shifting-cultivation basis. Under this extractive system, because the tractors are only used for discing and planting the crop, roads and water supplies are often lacking and labour is scarce, weeds such as Striga may become widespread, and serious erosion has occurred in areas where slopes, although gentle, are long (Agabawi 1970).

There appear to have been hopes among some of the Arab countries around the Persian Gulf that the Sudan could become the breadbasket of the Middle East, but these hopes have not materialized yet.

Salah El-Din El-Shazali (1980) has described a more typical Sudanese farming system at the village of Kukur, which is between the Blue Nile and the White Nile south of Khartoum, in an area on the clay plains with an average annual rainfall of about 900 mm. The average cultivated area per family was estimated as 3.15 ha in addition to a small garden plot around the house compound. Because land was not limiting at that time, farmers would partly clear an area (bildad) of trees that would be burned. This would be divided into two halves, and sorghum and sesame would be alternated on each half until the bildad was exhausted, when it would be left to rest for up to 10 years, and new land would be cleared. Although sorghum yielded better than sesame, sesame fetched a higher price and the rotation helped to maintain fertility and reduce weed buildup. Farm size was limited by labour availability because, although most farmers owned some cattle and goats, ox plows were apparently not used, so all cultivation was by hand hoe. Tractors were available for hire but farmers could not afford to hire them. Groups of men would work together on a reciprocal basis on each others' sorghum plots for food and beer. Women also worked in similar groups. Many young men would go away to work on one of the large mechanized farms to get money for marriage and so forth.

East Africa

Uganda

Traditionally, like the Somalis, the Masai, and other pastoral peoples, the Karamojong were transhumant pastoralists. As elsewhere, the increasing human population has necessitated keeping a number of animals that exceeds the carrying capacity of the pasture under the unrestricted grazing system. This led to severe denudation of the cover of palatable grasses and other vegetation, leaving bare soil that became seriously eroded. Inedible xerophytic plants, such as Sansevieria sp. and thorn-bush, spread into some of these areas further limiting the potential grazing land.

One of the valuable series of catchment research projects started by the now-defunct East African Agricultural and Forestry Research Organisation (EAAFRO) in the 1950s was established at Atumatak near Moroto, which has a mean annual rainfall of 753 mm (Pereira et al. 1962; Blackie et al. 1979). The project collected useful data on land and water management in that area, and showed clearly that the livestock-carrying capacity of the land could be increased by some simple grazing-management practices that maintained a cover of indigenous grasses on the land. This ground cover had the effect of reducing the runoff, which was found to amount to about 14% on overgrazed bare soil, to about 7% or less under improved grazing management (Blackie et al. 1979, p. 185).

Tanzania

Ruthenberg (1980, p. 97) indicates that about 1.25 ha of cotton; 1.25 ha of sorghum, millet, and maize (often mixed); 0.60 ha of rice; and 0.70 ha of cassava, giving an average crop area of 3.80 ha/farm, were grown on farms averaging 8.5 people and 6.90 ha in 1976. This gives 0.33 ha/person of food crops and 0.68 ha/person of cotton, or a total cropped area per person of just over 1 ha. With a labour force of 3.7 ME/farm, this is equivalent to 1.86 ha/ME. An average of 2 head of cattle and 10 sheep and goats were also kept. At that time, most people were living in ujamaa villages (Tanzanian collective villages), and had to spend an average of 1.5 hours/day walking to and from their cultivated plots.

Upland crops are planted on ridges, 50 cm high and 1.3–1.5 m apart, made with hand hoes. At the beginning of each cropping season, the weeds and crop residues are removed from these ridges and put into the furrows. The ridges are then split by hand so the organic matter is concentrated in the centre of the ridge and the weeds are smothered. The new season's crops are then planted on the new ridges, which assist in reducing erosion. Tie-ridging was tried, but is not generally practiced. Ox plowing has spread rapidly since the 1950s particularly in the drier areas, and especially for cotton growing on the flat. This roughly doubled the area cultivated per worker.

With the growth of population, land pressure has increased and it appears that some 70–80% of the potentially arable land is cropped each year. Cotton and cereal yields are gradually declining, and the area of cassava is increasing as soil fertility decreases. Manure is left in the bomas, and is not normally applied to the fields. Occasionally a boma may be moved and the site may be used for vegetables or other garden crops. This system is very demanding for labour before and during the cropping season, requiring about 2226 person-hours/farm, roughly half for cultivation and half for herding. The gross margin per hectare or per worker was about US $187 in 1976.

Zambia

Mazabuka farmers have worked beside European farmers for seventy years, and many of them have at one time or another worked for European farmers. The first Europeans to farm in Zambia relied on draft oxen, and Tonga farmers learned the practice from them. Later, when the Europeans adopted tractors and trucks, African farmers bought their used ox-drawn equipment and sometimes their trained oxen, but it was not long before some of them owned tractors and light delivery vans, too. European farmers constituted a large enough market for purchased inputs to support agricultural supply firms, which supplied black and white farmers alike with seeds, chemicals, and farm tools.

In 1967 the Mazabuka District presented a picture of active and comparatively rapid agricultural change that had its roots in the early century. An increased demand for maize, which coincided with the availability of ox-drawn implements, made for an increased acreage of the maize crop. During this early period a familiar pattern of agricultural development emerged. Increased agricultural output was achieved by the expansion of acreage and yields remained low.

Alienation of land, natural population increase, and a tendency to move to fertile soils along the rail line and near markets led to localized high population densities. At the same time there was a rapid buildup of Tonga cattle herds, which resulted in overstocking in some areas. This led to a government soil conservation program. The major works put in, and particularly the provision of cattle watering points, benefitted all farmers.

The Tonga are a strongly individualistic people and there are no strong barriers to inhibit personal initiative. Taking the opportunity presented by the availability of a market for maize, a small class of comparatively large farmers had emerged by the late 1940s, and some were already selling several hundred bags of maize. By 1950 a few had gross incomes of £1000 [US $2000] or more per annum. Most of this came from the sale of maize, but poultry, cattle, and pigs provided important secondary sources of income. A few farmers had invested in trucks and one or two in tractors, with which they did custom ploughing for their neighbours. With the incomes obtained from farming, capital investment in farms continued. This took the form of better housing, wells, the occasional windmill, fencing, implements, and machinery.

In the 1960s, farmers were introduced to major technical innovations, hybrid maize seed, and a new cash crop, cotton. With the use of hybrid varieties and fertilizer, yields of thirty to forty bags per acre [equivalent to 6–8 t/ha] became obtainable. The two inputs, double hybrid seed and fertilizer, cost about £9 per acre [US $45/ha] at the recommended rate. However, the survey showed that substantial and increasing numbers of Tonga were purchasing both inputs, and that individual farmers were getting yields of over twenty bags per acre [4.5 t/ha]. The wider use of these innovations was stimulated by the provision of substantial credit and facilities for marketing and the purchase of inputs.

Agricultural change among the Plateau Tonga over the last sixty years has been impressive, whether measured against the situation existing at the beginning of the century or against the experiences of other African savanna areas, and in recent years the contribution made by agricultural scientists has been of key importance. The Tonga farmer has responded readily to economic incentive. Future development in the area will depend on the availability of markets for Tonga produce. At present the district is essentially a one-crop area, but sales of cattle and milk provide substantial additional income.

A controversial aspect of development in the area is the extent to which assistance should be provided for tractor mechanization on small- and medium-scale farms. A minority of Tonga farms in Mazabuka District are large enough for the economic use of tractors, and there are others that would benefit from the use of seasonal tractor hire for land preparation. However, this is a situation that is best left to the enterprise of the Tonga themselves. Past development suggests that, as the need arises, the wealthier farmers will purchase tractors for private and contract work. Government assistance can most effectively be provided by helping the tractor owners and their employees to obtain adequate training in the maintenance and use of their equipment. Easy credit for the purchase of tractors, or a subsidized rate of tractor hire, is likely to result in inefficient use of expensive equipment and waste of farmers' resources.

Zimbabwe

Rohrbach (1987) has reported on a number of surveys carried out in Chibi in 1986. Individual holdings average 2.4 ha of which 2.15 ha were planted with summer season crops (Table 8). During the 1985/86 cropping season, on average, almost 60% of the 2.15 ha under crops was allocated to maize; 13% to groundnuts; 12% to finger millet; and 16% to "roundnuts" (presumably bambara groundnuts), sorghum, pearl millet, and other minor crops. Maize–finger millet and maize–groundnut intercrops were common, although they accounted for less than 10% of average cropped area,

Table 8. Cropping patterns at Chibi, Zimbabwe, 1974 and 1985.
Crop<super>a</super>	1974 (n = 46)			1985 (n = 106)
	Average area (ha)	Total area (%)	Farmers growing (%)	Average area (ha)	Total area (%)	Farmers growing (%)
Maize Groundnut Sorghum Pearl millet Finger millet Roundnut Other	1.15 0.46 0.31 0.30 0.29 0.12 0.05	42.3 17.1 11.3 11.3 10.6 4.4 3.1	93 74 43 37 61 46 36	1.27 0.28 0.09 0.07 0.25 0.14 0.05	59.3 12.9 4.2 3.4 11.6 6.4 2.3	100 69 30 15 70 78 36
Total	2.68	100.1	–	2.15	100.1	–
Source: Rohrbach (1987, table 4). a Maize, groundnut, and finger millet data incorporate intercrops.

Between 1974 and 1985, the average area planted per household declined by 20%, but the average maize plantings increased by 10%, mainly at the expense of the more drought-tolerant traditional cereals, sorghum and pearl millet. Rohrbach (1987, p. 159) suggests that the dominance of maize reflects its importance as the principal staple. Maize is strongly preferred both for its taste and ease of processing. Finger millet remains important as the major ingredient in beer and is recognized as valuable for its drought tolerance. Groundnuts are widely recognized for their nutrient value, particularly for young children. However, groundnuts are being replaced by manufactured cooking oils, particularly by younger families, for reasons of taste and convenience. Areas of sorghum and pearl millet are declining as the rising incidence of bird damage and the difficulty in processing these crops for consumption offset their drought-tolerant characteristics.

Maize is widely viewed as the principal potential source of cash earnings and the most profitable crop. This perception seems to have been supported by government price and marketing policies. Up to 1971, nominal producer prices for maize were maintained slightly above those for sorghum and groundnuts, perhaps because maize was mainly grown for the market by large-scale commercial farmers. After independence in 1979, nominal maize prices were doubled between 1979 and 1981, and the ratio of maize to sorghum prices rose by 40%. Marketing facilities in Chibi were also greatly improved, so that farmers could get their surplus crop to market. At the same time, farmers greatly increased their plantings of the new higher-yielding hybrid seeds. Although they apparently considered that increased fertilizer use was too risky with their uncertain rainfall regime, maize yields more than doubled from 420 kg/ha in 1975 to over 1000 kg/ha in 1985 (a high rainfall year). As a result, maize sales from the region rose from very little before 1979 to nearly 20 000 t in 1985. However, poorer rains in 1986 reduced yields and sales severely (Rohrbach 1987).

Collinson (1989) stresses the importance of livestock for the maintenance of soil fertility in this farming system.

Low fertility of the granitic sands was managed by crop rotation around an area of fallow and by the use of animal manure. As population pressure has increased, areas in fallow and grazing have been reduced. The resulting reduction in cattle numbers and in manure undermined farmers' strategies to maintain soil fertility and, through the loss of draft power, had made them more vulnerable to rainfall crises.

Only 45% of households owned cattle in 1981, compared to 56% five years earlier. Farmers had to choose between keeping cows for milk, or oxen for ploughing, and followers for replacement. The unorthodox answer was to keep the cows and use them for ploughing. Cattle-owning households ploughed for virtually the whole community. This prolonged the overall time taken to establish crops, lowered the quality of work on the seedbed and put heavy pressure on the cows. Such stresses were believed to reduce cow fecundity and threaten future milk supplies and the replacement of animals.

The higher incomes and yields reported for cattle owners demonstrate the power of higher resource endowments in managing the environment. At approximately 20 bags [1800 kg] per hectare, the maize yields of cattle owners were roughly twice as high as those of non-owners in the 1980–81 survey. Cattle owners also had a much lower failure rate for groundnuts. Owners showed more thorough seedbed preparations. For example, 60% of their maize plantings were winter ploughed, compared to 20% by non-owners, 40% of their plantings were harrowed, compared to 20% by non-owners, 90% of owners reported using cattle manure, compared with 15% for non-owners. Finally the proportions of maize and groundnuts planted by owners before Nov. 10 were 40% and 58% respectively, compared with 20% and 26% for non-owners. Differences in resource endowment were tempered by social cohesion; although cash payment had become the custom, owners still honoured the obligation to make their animals and equipment available to non-owners for land preparation in a relatively timely way.

The downward trend in cattle holdings has exaggerated problems of timely cultivation and the quality of work. The ability of Chibi farmers to adjust to unreliable rainfall and lowered soil fertility was reduced. Farmers in Chibi South used various devices to counter increasing animal nutrition problems; the use of cows for plowing in winter when the animals are in dire condition, the use of maize stover for dry season feeding, and very late planting of maize and bulrush millet to provide standing fodder. These measures identified leads for research; the pressing question was whether draft animals could be held in the Chibi system over the long run.

Zimbabwe as a whole, however, achieved a major increase in maize production in the years after 1979. In 1985, production reached a record level of over 3 million t, which was double the current domestic consumption level. Most of this increase came from the communal areas, which tripled their maize production to 1.6 million t between 1979 and 1985. By contrast, commercial production declined during the same period.

As outlined for Chibi, this "Green Revolution" in maize production seems to have been due to the same combination of factors that triggered the Green Revolution in Asia. That is, high yielding varieties in the form of maize hybrids that were well adapted to the environment, improved marketing facilities, and perhaps most importantly, farmers' perceptions of increasingly profitable crop price levels. Also, not so much in Chibi, but in other communal farming areas, there were large increases in fertilizer applications to maize and some increases in the use of crop-protection inputs and access to credit (Rohrbach 1987, p. 145). A missing factor that was present in Asia was that there was only limited use of irrigation in the communal areas in Zimbabwe.

The very large maize crop that was marketed mainly from the communal areas in 1985, probably largely as a result of the doubling of the maize price, seems to have been an embarrassment to the government, as maize storage facilities were overwhelmed, and there was a large surplus stock over national requirements. Considerable efforts were made to find profitable export markets, but it appears that much of the crop had to be exported at a loss, increasing the grain marketing board's, and eventually the government's, deficit considerably.

Synthesis

Farmers often plant small plots of maize, sometimes mixed with millet or sorghum, on the manured land round the homestead or village. This maize usually produces the first food after the "hungry gap" in the form of green cobs, but maize is more susceptible to drought than sorghum or millet. On the heavier soils, particularly where manure or fertilizer, or both, are available, additional maize may be planted, usually partly replacing sorghum or mixed with it. Small plots of rice are often planted in the seasonally flooded swamps.

This pattern extends across West Africa from Senegal as far as Chad, and includes much of the 6 million ha of sorghum in northern Nigeria.

Many farmers throughout this zone own livestock, mainly cattle, sheep, and goats. Cattle are used for plowing, and horses and donkeys are used for transport and, in Senegal and Burkina Faso, for planting and cultivating groundnuts. Livestock are often tended by paid herdsmen, frequently Fulani, who may be paid in milk or other forms. Where population pressure is heavy, so that continuous cultivation is practiced, as in the "groundnut basin" of Senegal, and around Kano in northern Nigeria, farmers have attempted to expand their manured area. They may do this by moving the cattle boma around the fields, or by paying or otherwise persuading the Fulani or other herdsmen to tether their cattle on the stubble in the dry season. Where insufficient manure is available and soils are inherently sandy and poor, as in parts of Senegal's "groundnut basin" and on the Mossi Plateau in Burkina Fasso, severe soil impoverishment and erosion can occur.

Although some phosphate fertilizer is applied to groundnuts in Senegal, and both phosphate and nitrogen are used on cotton and maize, little fertilizer is applied to the sorghum or millet crops; however, they may obtain some benefit from the phosphate residues after maize, groundnuts, or cotton.

In the subarid areas of Ethiopia, Somalia, the Sudan, Tanzania, and northeast Uganda, dark cracking clays (mainly vertisols), are widespread. Sorghum, mainly planted as a pure stand, is the principal crop in these areas, although a little maize may be grown. In Sukumaland, northern Tanzania, cotton is an important cash crop, and rice or sweet potato are planted in seasonal swamps or swamp fringes. Cassava is increasingly planted where soil fertility is declining.

In southern Africa, maize appears to have replaced sorghum and pearl millet throughout much of the area, but finger millet is still widely grown, mainly for beer, and sorghum and pearl millet are still widespread in the drier parts of Botswana and western Zimbabwe. Because maize is generally considered to be more susceptible to drought than sorghum or the millets, and because of the uncertainty of the rains in southern Africa, the possibility of persuading farmers to reverse the trend of replacing sorghum and pearl millet with maize has been widely discussed in recent years.

Considerable research has been undertaken, both by national researchers and by international agencies, particularly ICRISAT, to breed high-yielding hybrids or varieties of sorghum and pearl millet that are acceptable to farmers. By 1994, 15 improved sorghum varieties and 5 pearl millet varieties with ICRISAT involvement had been released by national research programs in southern Africa. In Zimbabwe, 37% of the total sorghum area was sown with variety SV2, and in Namibia about 35% of the millet area was sown with variety Okashana 1 in 1992/93 (ICRISAT 1994, p. 52). However, as described in the case of Zimbabwe, government cereal pricing and marketing policies generally seem to have favoured maize over other cereals, and farmers' taste preferences and perceptions of profitability also seem to favour maize.

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