Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:50:57.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Agro-diversity on a farming frontier: Kofyar smallholders on the Benue plains of central Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Résumé

Cet article examine la proposition que les niveaux de l'agro-diversité déclinent en conséquence de l'augmentation de l'intensification des systèmes agricoles. La plupart de la littérature sur l'agriculture itinérante souligne le grand nombre d'espèces de plantes, à la fois sauvages et cultivées, que ces systèmes incorporent, tandis que les descriptions de l'agriculture mécanisée et intensive indique quʼun petit nombre d'espèces survivent.

Cet article fait un compte-rendu sur un système agro-économique qui est connu pour son intensité—celui des Kofyars au centre du Nigéria—mais qui cependant arrive à maintenir un haut niveau de diversité. Cet article explore plus généralement le rôle de la bio-diversité dans les systèmes agricoles des petites exploitations, et présente des arguments en faveur de ces systèmes, qui comme celui des Kofyars, favorise la bio-diversité comme faisant part de la ‘soutenabilité’ économique et environnementale, bien quʼils commencent à s'adapter à de nouvelles conditions agricoles.

Type
Biodiversity on the farm
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adams, W. M., and Grove, A. T. (eds.). 1983. Irrigation in Tropical Africa: problems and problem solving, Cambridge African Monographs 3. Cambridge: Centre for African Studies.Google Scholar
Altieri, M. A. 1990. ‘Why study traditional agriculture?’ in Carroll, C. R., Vandermeer, J. H. and Rossett, P. M. (eds.), Agroecology, pp. 551–64. New York.Google Scholar
Altieri, M. A., Anderson, M. K. and Merrick, L. C. 1987. ‘Peasant agriculture and the conservation of crop and wild plant resources’, Conservation Biology 1, 4958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ames, C. G. 1934. Gazetteer of Plateau Province. Jos: Jos Native Authority.Google Scholar
André, G., and Beckman, B. 1986. The Wheat Trap: bread and underdevelopment in Nigeria. London: Zed Press.Google Scholar
Balée, W., and Gély, A. 1981. ‘Managed forest succession in Amazonia: the Kaʼapor case’, Advances in Economic Botany 7, 129–58.Google Scholar
Barlett, P. F. 1989. ‘Industrial agriculture’, in Plattner, S. (ed.), Economic Anthropology, pp. 253–91. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Berry, W. 1981. The Gift of Good Land: further essays cultural and agricultural. Berkeley, Ca.: North Point.Google Scholar
Boserup, E. 1965. The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: the economics of agrarian change under population pressure. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Carlstein, T. 1982. Time Resources, Society and Ecology. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Clay, J. 1991. ‘Cultural survival and conservation: lessons from the past twenty years’, in Oldfield, M. L. and Alcorn, J. B. (eds.), Biodiversity, pp. 248–73. Boulder, Co.: Westview.Google Scholar
Conant, F. D. 1984. ‘Remote sensing, discovery and generalization in human ecology’, in Moran, E. (ed.), The Ecosystem Concept in Anthropology, pp. 239–51. Boulder, Co.: Westview.Google Scholar
Conklin, H. C. 1957. Hanunoo Agriculture. Rome: FAO.Google Scholar
Dasmann, Raymond F. 1991. ‘The importance of cultural and biological diversity’, in Oldfield, M. L. and Alcorn, J. B. (eds.), Biodiversity: culture, conservation, and ecodevelopment, pp. 715. Boulder; Co.: Westview.Google Scholar
Dove, M. R. 1983. ‘Ethnographic atlas of Ifugao: implications for theories of agricultural evolution in southeast Asia’, Current Anthropology 24, 516–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, F. 1988. Peasant Economics: farm households and agrarian development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Etkin, N. L., and Ross, P. J. 1994. ‘Pharmacological implications of “wild” plants in Hausa diet’, in Etkin, N. L. (ed.), Eating on the Wild Side: the pharmacologic, ecologic, and social implications of using noncultigens. Tucson, Az.: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Falloux, F., and Talbot, L. M. 1993. Crisis and Opportunity: environment and development in Africa. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Gilruth, P. T., and Hutchinson, P. T. 1990. ‘Assessing deforestation in the Guinea highlands of West Africa using remote sensing’, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 56, 1375–82.Google Scholar
Goland, C. 1993. ‘Field scattering as agricultural risk management: a case study from Cuyo Cuyo, department of Puno, Peru’, Mountain Research and Development 13(4) 317–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, J. I., and Lambin, E. F. 1993. ‘Land use in an urban hinterland: ethnography and remote sensing in the study of African intensification’, American Anthropologist 95, 839–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, I. D. (ed.). 1979. Land Resources of Central Nigeria: agricultural development possibilities 4B (Benue). Surbiton: Land Resource Development Centre, Ministry of Overseas Development.Google Scholar
Hunn, E. 1982. ‘The utilitarian factor of folk biological classification’, American Anthropologist 84, 830–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyden, G. 1988. ‘Beyond hunger in Africa—breaking the spell of monoculture’, in Cohen, R. (ed.), Satisfying Africa's Food Needs: food production and commercialization in Africa agriculture, pp. 4748. Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kassam, A. W., and Andrews, D. J. 1975. ‘Effects of sowing date on growth, development and yield of photosensitive sorghum at Samaru, northern Nigeria’, Experimental Agriculture 11, 227–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kowal, J. M., and Kassam, A. W. 1978. Agricultural Ecology of Savanna: a study of West Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Leach, M. 1991. ‘Shifting Social and Ecological Mosaics in Mende Forest Farming’,paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association,Chicago,20–4 November 1991.Google Scholar
Linares, O. F. 1993. ‘Urban fanning in Casamance, Senegal: increasing biological and cultural diversity in secondary towns’,paper from the session ‘Complex Landscapes: biodiversity conservation in historical and cultural context’, African Studies Association annual meeting,Boston, Ma.,4–7 December 1993.Google Scholar
Moran, E. 1976. Agricultural Development along the Transamazon Highway. Center for Latin American Studies Monograph Series, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Mortimore, M. 1972. ‘Land and population pressure in the Kano close-settled zone, northern Nigeria’, in Prothero, R. M. (ed.), People and Land in Africa South of the Sahara: readings in social geography, pp. 6071. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mortimore, M. 1993. ‘The intensification of peri-urban agriculture: the Kano close-settled zone, 1964–86’, in Turner, B. L. II, Hyden, G. and Kates, R. (eds.), Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa, pp. 358400. Gainesville, Fl.: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Netting, R. McC. 1968. Hill Farmers of Nigeria: cultural ecology of the Kofyar of the Jos Plateau. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Netting, R. McC. 1993. Smallholders, Householders: farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Netting, R. McC., Stone, M. P., and Stone, G. D. 1989. ‘Kofyar cash-cropping: choice and change in indigenous agricultural development’, Human Ecology 17 (3), 299319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Netting, R. McC., Stone, G. D., and Stone, M. P. 1993. ‘Agricultural expansion, intensification, and market participation among the Kofyar, Jos Plateau, Nigeria’, in Turner, B. L. II, Hyden, G. and Kates, R. (eds.), Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa, pp. 206–49. Gainesville, Fl.: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Norgaard, R. 1989. ‘Risk and its management in traditional and modern agroeconomic systems’, in Gladwin, C. and Truman, K. (eds.), Food and Farm: current debates and policies, pp. 199216. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Norman, D. W., Simmons, E. B., and Hays, H. M. 1982. Farming Systems in the Nigerian Savanna. Boulder, Co.: Westview.Google Scholar
Oguntoyinbo, J. S. 1982. ‘Climate: precipitation’, in Barbour, K. M. and Oguntoyinbo, J. S. (eds.), Nigeria in Maps, pp. 1617. London: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Oldfield, M., and Alcorn, J. (eds.). 1991. Biodiversity, Culture, Conservation, and Ecodevelopment. Boulder, Co.: Westview.Google Scholar
Pimentel, D. et al. 1992. ‘Conserving biological diversity in agricultural/forestry systems’, Bioscience 42, 354–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posey, D. A. 1985. ‘Indigenous management of tropical forest ecosystems: the case of the Kayapo Indians of the Brazilian Amazon’, Agroforestry Systems 3, 139–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, P. 1985. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: ecology and food production in West Africa. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Richards, P. 1991. ‘Experimenting farmers and agricultural research’, in Haswell, M. and Hunt, D. (eds.), Rural Households in Emerging Societies: technology and change in sub-Saharan Africa, pp. 22–1. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Shaxon, L., and Tauer, L. 1992. ‘Intercropping and diversity: an economic analysis of cropping patterns on smallholder farms in Malawi’, Experimental Agriculture 28, 211–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, G. D. 1991a. ‘Settlement ethnoarchaeology: changing patterns among the Kofyar of Nigeria’, Expedition 33, 1623.Google Scholar
Stone, G. D. 1991b. ‘Agricultural territories in a dispersed settlement system’, Current Anthropology 32, 343–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, G. D., Johnson-Stone, M. P., and Netting, R. M. 1984. ‘Household variability and inequality in Kofyar subsistence and cash-cropping economies’, Journal of Anthropological Research 40 (1), 90108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, M. P., Stone, G. D., and Netting, R. M. 1995. ‘The sexual division of labor in Kofyar agriculture’, American Ethnologist 22 (1), 165–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurston, H. D. 1992. Sustainable Practices for Plant Disease Management in Traditional Farming Systems. Boulder, Co.: Westview.Google Scholar
Turner, B. L. II, and Brush, S. B. (eds.). 1987. Comparative Farming Systems. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Turner, B. L. II, and Doolittle, W. E. 1978. ‘The concept and measure of agricultural intensity’, Professional Geographer 67, 384–96.Google Scholar
Watts, M. 1983. Silent Violence: food, famine, and peasantry in northern Nigeria. Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press.Google Scholar