BACKGROUND TO MULTIPLE CROPPING

Until very recently the most striking advances in agricultural production were mostly obtained through high-input monocrops — the green revolution. The CGIAR¹ institutes were set up largely to develop and improve single crops, and many forestry programmes were similarly based, e.g. on fast-growing Central American tropical pines for industrial production (see for instance Kemp, 1973).

But the African husbandman has continued to use his traditional multiple cropping systems, improved where possible by the adoption of new crops and techniques, despite the efforts of expensive extension services to induce him to adopt monocropping practices (Steiner, 1982).

It may even be, as suggested by Bowers (1981), that the protracted struggle by the Wachagga of Kilimanjaro to be allowed to grow coffee during the colonial period was really a fight for the recognition of the validity of the multiple cropping, as opposed to the plantation, approach to land use. The recent² development of interest in farming systems research (see e.g. Collinson, 1982) is a reflexion of the recognition that major changes away from multiple cropping are unlikely to occur in Africa. The extent of multiple cropping systems continues to be considerable, e.g. in Southern Nigeria in 1970-71 over 80% of areas were reported under this type of system; in Uganda in 1963-64 over half the farming areas were quoted as under multiple cropping. This latter included areas of coffee, maize and groundnuts (Okigbo & Greenland, 1976).

More detail on West African incidence of intercropping is recorded by Steiner (1982) which indicates that both in humid and dry zones the percentage is very high indeed.

Note: Mean of all Ghanaian, S. Guinea & N. Guinea sites taken.

Two factors in particular suggest that these levels are unlikely to fall. These are the increase in population and the fact that small farmers tend to practise multiple cropping more than large farmers.

Steiner (1982) reports that an average of over 70% of farms in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana & Nigeria, are under 5 ha.
 

It seems likely that similar figures apply to other parts of Africa with high or rising populations.

Footnote_______________

1 Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

² Although as early as 1934 L.S.B. Leakey (Science and the African) was recommending research on traditional farming systems in East Africa, and deploring the neglect of them at the time (quoted by Agboola, 1981).