Agriculture

Tropical Africa still has slash-and-burn agriculture. Before the rainy season, young men leave for the faraway fields early in the morning. Once there, they tear grass off the surface using their big hoes and cut down young trees. Grass, branches and trees are stocked in a pile and burned – that’s a fertilizer for the future field. They do not know much in Africa about using manure as a fertilizer. Also, they don’t have manure: farmers have very few cattle and it’s free range. In two to three years the soil runs poor, and a new field has to be cleared, leaving the old one to rest. That’s why many fields are so far away from villages: there are not enough nearby fields for everybody.

Someone who couldn’t sow millet or rice right after the first rains, will have no harvest: the rainy season only lasts three to four months in the savanna. When the crops grow, children have to guard them from dawn till dusk. In the savanna, where they mainly grow millet, sorghum, and rice, birds have to be scared away. In the wooded areas they grow yams, cassava, taro and other root crops; here, fields are guarded against boars, monkeys and antelopes. And then, the happy time of harvest comes, when the long months of hunger are over and everybody fills their stomachs.

They plow their land in very few places in Southern Africa: only in Ethiopia has a wooden maresha plow been known since ancient times. Since colonial times, the Fulbe of the Futa-Jallon uplands in Guinea have plowed their land. In the rest of Africa, people use a hoe. That’s what the best workers are called – “the heroes of the hoe”, and bards make up songs of praise and epic tales about them.

Ploughing with two oxen.  Ethiopia. The Amhara. M. Gervers.		Thrashing.  Ethiopia. The Yaure. M. Gervers.		The working team “Drop the lie!” clears a farm before sowing. Santa, Vydrin V., 2002.
Clearing a field: The last effort before the lunch. Santa, Vydrin V., 2002.		Pressing of palm oil. Kiekiekro, Tsuryupa M., 2007.		Stick "ploughing". The plough is not used in this southern part of Ethiopia. The earth is so rich here the inhabitants can harvest two crops a year. Ethiopia (Abyssinia), Gervers M., 2007.
Chiwara association ritual for the end of agriculture work and rainy season. Bamako, 2004 E. den Otter		Women’s knife for roots cleaning. Sudan, mid-to-late 19th c.