Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/137

The Resources of the Niger Delta: Agriculture population and rural poverty. A wealthy and healthy rural environment depends on small farmers working efficiently and productively for themselves. Food security is not achieved through large-scale farming but through production diversity and storage of surpluses.

13.2.2 AGROFORESTRY

An answer to the agricultural problem in the LEM ecozone is Agroforestry, as we have already suggested above. Agroforestry is:

"the maintenance and enhancement of soil conditions with the use of tree and shrub crops, and/or leguminous trees, shrub and herbaceous plants in order to maximise sustainable agricultural productivity. It may be used to maximise production on good soils through mixing a variety of tree and non-tree crops, or to maintain production on poor soils."

It must be stressed that there is nothing new about agroforestry in Nigerian agriculture. Indeed it is true to say that traditional agriculture is agroforestry which has historically been able to adapt in response to changing social, economic and climatic conditions (for example it is interesting to see how agriculture quickly changed in the Niger Delta in response to a demand for palm oil in Europe from about 1850 onwards: whole communities re-organised themselves and their land in order to maximise the production of the oily gold). However, recently, the modern population has grown so fast and so suddenly that traditional systems have been unable to adapt fast enough, with the result that there are indications in parts of the LEM ecozones of Nigeria of a collapse of agricultural systems altogether.

SOME TRADITIONAL FORMS OF AGROFORESTRY

Shifting Agriculture

One of the sustainable relationships that viable society had with their environment was shifting agriculture in the tropical rainforest ecozones. Because it has been misunderstood by modern observes who see it operating today in areas where it is impracticable because of unsustainable high population densities, shifting agriculture is often derided as an inefficient form of agriculture that damages the environment. In fact, in conditions of sustainable population densities, shifting agriculture is ecologically very efficient, primarily because farmers do not shift to areas of primary forest but return to fallow land because it is easier to clear.

The shifting agricultural landscape is a mosaic of farms (including economic trees), land in various stages of fallow (which may be used for low intensive agriculture such as growing plantains and fruit trees), secondary and primary cultured forest, and current and abandoned house sites containing fruit trees. This land use pattern is ecologically efficient because it maintains a high level of plant biodiversity and because at any given time a large area is covered by dense vegetation; such conditions are conducive to high animal biodiversity and although some of the larger mammals such as elephants may be discouraged (much to the relief of the farmer to whom they are a pest) primate densities may increase due to expanded food supplies, and species of non-forest birds will be attracted. All this is beneficial to the human population because the high level of biomass and bioactivity increases supplies of non-farm products and also accelerates land 135