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The Concept of Innovation and the History of Cocoa Farming in Western Nigeria*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Sara S. Berry
Sara S. Berry
Affiliation:
University of Indiana
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Extract

The history of cocoa production in Western Nigeria is an example of a successful innovation in the Schumpeterian sense of the term—a new productive activity which, when adopted by a number of producers, leads to economic growth and structural change within a given institutional and social context. Cocoa growing spread in Western Nigeria through the efforts of migrant farmers, many of whom relied on traditional, non-economic institutions, such as the lineage or ethnic community, to mobilize the economic resources they needed to establish cocoa farms. From an examination of the activities of migrant farmers in three Yoruba states—Ibadan, Ife and Ondo—it is argued that the spread of cocoa farming probably strengthened these traditional institutions. At the same time, it has effected significant changes in the volume, organization and geographical distribution of rural economic activity in Western Nigeria.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , January 1974 , pp. 83 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Keynes, J. M., The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (New York, 1936), 383.Google Scholar

2 Schumpeter first set forh these ideas in The Theory of Economic Development, Harvard Economic Studies, XLVI (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), originally published in German, 1911.Google Scholar

3 Schumpeter himself was well aware that economic activity does not take place in a vacuum and cannot be analysed without reference to the historical context in which it occurs. Ibid. 3–5.

4 Hance, William A., African Economic Development, revised edition (New York, 1967), 20.Google Scholar

5 See, e.g. Herskovits, M. J. and Harwitz, M., eds., Economic Transition in Africa (Evanston, Illinois, 1964)Google Scholar, especially chapters by Johnston, B. F. and Katzin, M., or Kamarck, A., The Economics of African Development (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

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7 This article is based on material collected in Nigeria in 1966 and 1970/71, both from archival sources and from interviews with several hundred farmers.Google Scholar

8 The early history of cocoa farming in Ghana has been described in Polly Hill's classic study, Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge, 1963). In Nigeria, the rate of expansion was slower, and the acquisition of land for cocoa farming was organized in a different way.Google Scholar

9 Similarly, Polly Hill writes that in Ghana ‘the expansionary process was much encouraged by the fact that, after a short initial hesitation, it tended to involve all the inhabitants of the main Akwapim towns’ (Migrant Cocoa Farmers, 181). There the expansion involved the purchase of farmland.Google Scholar This was carried out by ‘companies’ some of which were organized along kinship lines (ibid. ch. III) and which were ‘primarily devices for assisting small men to migrate’. (Ibid. 182.)

10 Cohen, A., Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Berkeley, California, 1969), 20, 22.Google Scholar

11 I use the term ‘city-state’, rather than the more conventional ‘kingdom’, to refer the main political units into which the Yoruba were organized because, although most of them were organized around a major town, their political structures were not uniform.Google Scholar

12 I have documented this process in some detail for Ibadan and Ondo; Berry, S. S., ‘Cocoa in Western Nigeria, 1890–1940: A Study of an Innovation in a Developing Economy’, University of Michigan Ph.D., 1967.Google Scholar

13 Much of the material in this essay, especially that on migation and the organization of cocoa farming, is based on research carried out in Nigeria in 1970/71.Google Scholar

14 They refer briefly to farmers from Atan, in Egba Division, who owned farms near Ife, and also note the presence in the cocoa belt of Yoruba from ‘the areas between Oshogbo and Offa’, but consider the latter to be migrant labourers—not cocoa farmers in their own right.Google ScholarGalletti, R., Baldwin, K. D. S. and Dina, I. O., Nigerian Cocoa Farmers (London, 1956), 206 ff.Google Scholar

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16 My information on this point is confirmed by research on emigration from northern Yoruba towns and the early history of kola production in Egba Division carried out by Agiri, B. A., Department of History, University of Lagos.Google ScholarCf. Oyemakinde, J. O., ‘A History of Indigenous Labour on the Nigerian Railway, 1895–1945’, University of Ibadan Ph.D., 1970.Google Scholar

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20 There are hundreds of residents in communities such as Akanran and Araromi, south of Ibadan, and thousands in, e.g. Olode, Omifunfun and Mefoworade in Ife Division.Google Scholar

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22 The terms on which tenant farmers use their land vary from one city-state to another. In Ibadan, for example, the amount of ishakole is nominal—rarely more than 5 shillings per farmer—and in Ondo, where until recently lineages did not exercise ownership rights over rural land at all, ishakole itself is still fairly rare.Google Scholar

23 The use of chemical sprays to control black pod disease and capsid attack is a notable exception. Recent estimates by the Western Nigeria Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources indicate that it is still cheaper to establish a new cocoa farm on uncultivated forest land than to cut down and replant old trees. M.A.N.R., Western Nigeria Development Project, Cocoa (Ibadan, n.d.).Google Scholar

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30 In principle, early cocoa farmers could also obtain assistance on their farms from friends and neighbours, with whom they might join in some form of mutual aid arrangement (owe or aro), from debtors (iwofa) who agreed to work for a creditor until the loan was repaid, and from slaves. Few of my informants actually said that they or their forebears had used such sources of labour, however. Only farmers with money to lend could obtain the services of iwofa or debtors, and mutual aid arrangements were used primarily for heavy, one-shot tasks such as building a house or clearing forest land. Cf. Chief Ayorinde, J. A., ‘Western Nigeria Village Social Organization’, 1966 (mimeographed)Google Scholar and Fadipe, N. A., The Sociology of the Yoruba, Edited by Okediji, F. O. and Okediji, O.O. (Ibadan, 1970), 150.Google Scholar

31 Hopkins, A. G., ‘The Lagos Strike of 1897’, Past and Present, 35, 12, 1966, 143–4.Google Scholar

32 Ibid. 143. Most of Hopkins's evidence refers to Lagos, Ijebu-Ode and Abeokuta, where slavery may have disappeared more quickly than in the interior.

33 Oyo and Ondo Provinces, Annual Reports (NAI).Google Scholar

34 Chief Obisesan, J. A., Diary, 16 Feb. 1921. I am grateful to the Aperin family for permission to consult Chief Obisesan's diaries, which are kept at the University of Ibadan Library.Google Scholar

35 Cf. Hill, 187.Google Scholar

36 In Ibadan, I encountered few non-Ibadan growing cocoa, but met many Yoruba from other communities who were engaged in non-agricultural occupations, such as trade or crafts. Apparently, the Ibadan forests were largely exploited for cocoa growing by the Ibadan themselves but other Yoruba were attracted there by the growing market for other goods and services which developed as farmers' incomes increased. In Ondo, I also met a number of Ikale farmers who had come to Ondo to grow cocoa because the soils in their own area were not suitable for cocoa.Google Scholar

37 Cf. Hill, 190–1Google Scholar and Brokensha, D., Social Change in Larteh, Ghana (Oxford, 1966), 57–8.Google Scholar