Agricultural Systems in Africa
Senior 3 · Geography
Agricultural Systems in Africa
Lesson 2 of 5
30 min
Let's begin
In 1926 the government of Liberia leased the American tyre maker Firestone up to one million acres of land, chosen wherever the company wished, for 99 years at six cents an acre. On the banks of the Farmington River, about 24 km from the Atlantic, Firestone planted what became the world's largest continuous rubber farm, at Harbel. A smallholder in Rwanda farms a plot she can walk around in minutes. How can one farm be thousands of times bigger, and who gains from it?
Definition
Modern (commercial) agriculture: farming mainly for sale, using capital, machines, improved seed, fertiliser and scientific methods. Plantation agriculture: large-scale farming of one cash crop on an estate, with many paid workers, heavy investment and usually a factory on site, mostly for export. Monoculture: growing a single crop over a large area.
Most of Africa's plantations were started in the colonial period by European companies, to supply raw materials to factories in Europe and America. Many are still run by large companies today, often beside the farms of smallholder outgrowers who sell their crop to the estate's factory.
| Crop | Examples of plantation areas |
|---|---|
| Rubber | Harbel (Liberia); southern Côte d'Ivoire; Edo and Delta States (Nigeria); western Ghana |
| Tea | Kericho and Limuru (Kenya); the highlands of western and southern Rwanda |
| Sugar cane | Kakira and Lugazi (Uganda); Mumias (Kenya); Kabuye (Rwanda) |
| Oil palm | Southern Nigeria; Côte d'Ivoire; the DR Congo |
| Sisal | Tanga region (Tanzania) |
From the 1960s, plant breeders such as Norman Borlaug produced high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice. Grown with fertiliser, pesticides and irrigation, they doubled harvests in Mexico, India and Pakistan. This package became known as the green revolution. It spread more slowly in Africa, where most farming depends on rain, the staples are many (maize, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, bananas) and roads and markets are poor. Since 2006 the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has promoted improved seed and fertiliser across the continent.
Rwanda's own version is the Crop Intensification Programme, launched by the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) in 2007 and run through the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB). Farmers on neighbouring plots agree to grow the same priority crop (land use consolidation, from 2008) and receive improved seed, subsidised fertiliser and advice. MINAGRI reports that production of the priority crops on supported plots grew by more than 150% between 2007 and 2013 (MINAGRI, Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation 4, 2018).
Definition
Green revolution: the big increase in crop yields brought by high-yielding seed varieties used together with fertiliser, pesticides and irrigation. High-yielding variety (HYV): a crop variety bred to give a much larger harvest when it is well fed and watered. Land use consolidation: neighbouring farmers growing the same crop on adjoining plots, which they still own, so that inputs and advice can be shared.
| Benefits of the green revolution | Problems |
|---|---|
| Much higher yields from the same land. | Seed and fertiliser are costly; poor farmers may fall into debt. |
| Less hunger and cheaper food in towns. | Growing one crop reduces the variety of food and raises the risk of pests. |
| Surplus to sell, so incomes rise. | Heavy use of chemicals can pollute water and harm soils. |
| Less pressure to clear forest for new fields. | Benefits go first to farmers with land, water and money. |
The rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, comes from the Amazon basin. It was brought to West Africa in the colonial period. When its bark is cut, it gives a milky liquid, latex, from which natural rubber is made for tyres, gloves, hoses and footwear.
Where: Côte d'Ivoire is now Africa's largest producer; in 2023 it produced just under 1.5 million tonnes and overtook Vietnam to become the world's third-largest producer (Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries, reported by European Rubber Journal, 2024). Liberia (Firestone's Harbel plantation, worked since 1926), Nigeria (Edo and Delta States) and Ghana also produce rubber.
Conditions: rubber needs high temperatures all year (about 25–30 °C), heavy rain well spread through the year (2,000 mm or more) with no long dry season, deep, well-drained soils and gentle lowland slopes: the conditions of the West African coastal forest belt.
Growing and tapping: seedlings are raised in nurseries and planted in rows. Trees are tapped when they are about six years old and 150 mm across. In the early morning, before the heat makes the latex set, the tapper shaves a thin strip of bark along a downward half spiral; latex runs along the cut into a cup (Figure 2). It is then collected, coagulated, dried and exported.
Figure 2. Tapping and processing natural rubber.
| Importance | Problems |
|---|---|
| Export earnings: rubber is one of Côte d'Ivoire's leading exports. | World prices rise and fall, and synthetic rubber made from oil competes. |
| Jobs for tappers, factory workers and smallholder outgrowers. | Hard work for low pay; a UN report found that pressure to meet daily tapping quotas at Firestone pushed some workers to use child labour. |
| Estates built roads, schools, clinics and housing. | Clearing forest for new plantations destroys habitats. |
| Raw material for local factories (tyres, foam, gloves). | Pollution of rivers from processing has been alleged; Firestone denies it. |
| Trees protect the soil better than annual crops. | Liberia's civil wars (1989–2003) halted and damaged production. |
Worked example
Worked example 1: a concession in numbers. Firestone's 1926 lease allowed up to 1,000,000 acres at six cents (US$0.06) an acre a year. 1 acre = 0.4047 ha.
Worked example
Worked example 2: estimating an estate's output (illustrative figures). An estate has 400 ha of mature rubber with 450 tapped trees per hectare. Each tree gives 4 kg of dry rubber a year.
Warning
Plantation does not simply mean "big farm". A plantation grows one cash crop, employs many paid workers and usually processes the crop on site for export. A large cattle ranch or a large maize farm is commercial farming, but not a plantation.
Tip
For any plantation crop, learn four things: the conditions it needs, where it is grown (named country and area), how it is grown and processed, and its importance and problems. That is the shape of most exam questions.
Gravity Productions: natural rubber tapping and latex processing. This film was made in Asia, but the same steps are used in West Africa. Match each stage you see to a box in Figure 2.
Practice
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
