The Yoruba, and African, elite, intellectual and politician perceive African farming as peasantry and retrogressive; a negative contributor to the nation’s economy, and that which could not, and never would be able to, feed the nation. To these elevated Africans, cash cropping was the answer to our poverty. A farmer with acres and acres of jute plant, for example, was more valuable to the economy, they say, because the jute plant could be sold to make the jute bags that the world wants. The jute income could then be used to fund education, health and infrastructure projects etc etc. A farmer with acres and acres of pineapples, they reason, could successfully compete in the international market with pineapple farmers from Asia, Caribbean and Latin America.
This, the ‘jutebag farm economy’, or agricultural farming as they like to call it, has too many disadvantages, however. One, it diverted the indigenous farmer away from growing what could better feed the nation. Two, it created loss of crop diversity, which resulted in change in the dietary habit of the people from healthy to unhealthy monotone. Three, it deprived the indigenous farmer of sustainable income, and as a result, his children dislocated to the city for homelessness, joblessness, and crime. Four, it fashioned an economy where the fortunes of the farmer, and his country, was not determined by him but by the buyer, that is, the international market.
Five, the ‘jutebag farm economy’ created a huge deficit between indigenous farm export, on the one hand, and processed food, mechanisation and fertiliser import, on the other. Six, it made farming an international competition that was so rigged in favour of others that farmers in the emerging nations of Africa could never win. It is self-evident therefore that the ‘jutebag farm economy’, or agricultural farming as they call it, is calamitous for both Yorubaland and Africa. There is no good reason to recommend it.
The Yoruba were never subsistence farmers. Farming was the backbone of the Yoruba economy in the ancient times. Farming enabled the Yoruba not only to feed themselves, but also to prosper and build and live in large urban centres. Farming enabled the Yoruba to achieve full adult, female and male, employment. In more recent times, the farming enabled Awolowo to perform development wonders in Yorubaland between 1954 and 1959, before Nigeria’s independence took over and destroyed it all.
The philosophy of Yoruba farming was not just to feed your family, but also to have enough surplus to market and/or to food-process for the market. This is Yoruba agrarianism, where the prosperity of the one cumulated with those of others to transform into the prosperity of the whole.
Yoruba agrarianism has not been static either. Over the ages, it has embraced a variety of crop innovation. The Yoruba farming history is of diversification of cultigens; the spectrum of crops available for cultivation greatly extended. Plantain and groundnuts came from Asia. Maize, cassava, tomatoes, pineapples and mangoes came from the Americas. Commercial crops such as cocoa, coffee and tobacco were domesticated. Richards (1983) described this phenomenon as 'one of the great glories of African science'.
Adeniyi (2012) investigated what made for a successful agrarianism. The data identifies farm size as the main determinant of net revenue for the indigenous Yoruba farmer. Apparently, 4 hectares or 10 acres was an ideal size, even when tree crops were included. The data further reveals the following as contributors to increase the farmer’s income: level of technology adopted, total number of hired labour, and how many enterprises combined on the farms. Engagement of the extended family was a significant labour cost reduction tactic. The data also reveals that most farmers found farming profitable and satisfying whilst more than 95% would continue with farming regardless of adverse conditions or crop failure.
In the olden days, land belonged to everyone. Nobody sold land. Nobody bought land. If you wanted a piece of land, you simply went into the bush and annexed it, and it became officially yours. It was that simple. That was the land law then. It was the British in 1914 or thereabouts that jettisoned that noble land practice. They introduced in its place, ownership of land by government primarily as a means of making money for the government. The British commoditised land. We must rescind their land law which currently is the practice in Yorubaland, but which has caused immense damage to our Yoruconomics and to our culture and tradition.
A progressive Yoruba government would revive the old ways. First, the government would publish a map of land designated exclusively for farming and for nothing else. Second, putative farmers would be invited to annex and register exclusive rights to farmland, each prospect say of 4 hectares or less in size. No farmer would own more than one farmland. An extended family could be permitted to annex perhaps a maximum of 8 hectares. Third, the government would provide financial assistance to the farmer, if need be, to procure seeds, hand carts, composters, ‘walking’ petrol machinery, such as, tiller, cultivator (ie walking tractor), and chain saw and strimmer. The only expectation would be that the farmer produced food that his family ate and excess of same for the market.
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