Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/144

The Resources of the Niger Delta: Agriculture 13.3.5 THE RESOURCE CONFLICT IN THE FRESH-WATER ECOZONE

Thus the resource conflict (see Chapter 10) in the Fresh-Water ecozone is not just between agriculture and forest, but between small-farmer and agro-industrial production. But whatever the final answer, the FAM ecozone is and will be the necessary location of future food production, and if this production is to be sustainable then the right social incentives and ecological safe-guards have to be put in place.

Agricultural development is, and will become more of, a political issue in the FreshWater ecozone, because of the large sums of money involved and the limited resources in terms of land. The trends are already set: large developments are being planned without proper Cost Benefit Analysis (which include social and environmental impact costing) to guide decision-makers. The result could be like the oil industry with Local People being marginalised and worse, suffering a loss of effective income as a result of capital intensive agro-industrial projects: the outcome will be social dislocation and social disorder of the kind experienced already in relation to the oil industry.

13.4 AGRICULTURE IN THE BRACKISH-WATER ECOZONE

The Brackish-Water ecozone is not, as indicated already, an important agricultural zone, and for this reason it is the most sparsely populated of the ecozones of the Niger Delta. Generally the people who exploit the ecozone live on the fringes of the Fresh-Water or Barrier Island ecozones. Even Nembe, one of the largest towns associated with the ecozone, is on the edge of the ecozone.

Nonetheless throughout the Brackish-Water ecozone there are the small "islands" that, by the natural processes described in Chapter 7., have become dry-land subject to fresh-water influences. Here coconuts are most commonly seen, and also anything else that will tolerate the high water table and chicoco type soils (oil palms and pineapples appear to do well, but not plantains which are, all the same, persistently planted).

13.4.1 PADDY RICE IN THE BRACKISH-WATER ECOZONE

Also the ecozone has substantial potential for growing paddy-rice as in other West African countries with similar conditions. There are a number of methods of growing the rice but they all have in common the need: to maximise fresh-water either as rain-water, flood-water, or tidal fresh-water; and to minimise the natural acidity of the acid-sulphate soils by maintaining reduced conditions - as section 5.5 of Chapter 3. explains, it is the oxidisation of iron pyrites (FeS₂), that produces the damaging free sulphuric acid.

In rain-fed systems, polders are built above the low tide mark to keep out the brackish high tides and to catch rainwater, while the rice is planted on ridges to maximise the affect of the fresh rainwater. At the end of the wet season, the brackish high tides are allowed into the polders to maintain reduced conditions and thus stop the release of sulphuric acid. Properly designed these systems are constructed between a fringe of mangrove forest and dry fresh-water land, often including a fishpond. Fish are also able to feed on the decaying rice stalks so that the role of the BAM ecozone as the basis of the fish food chain need not be unduly compromised.

Another system is known as tidal rice and is suitable for the wide shallow Niger Delta estuaries. Here, in the flood season, tides push the freshwater up-stream to flood the rice field twice a day. In the dry season brackish water takes over and rice cultivation is not possible, but again, properly managed, this system leaves a fringe of mangrove intact, and rice debris acts as the basis of the fish food chain. At the mouth of the Benin 142