Colonial Agriculture from the 1920’s to the 1930’s

Prior to the Great Depression, Africa had already been colonized by Europe. The colonization entailed more than the creation of select settlements, but expanded to the point of mass resource cultivation. As to be expected from imperialist governments, much thought was not spent on the ecological impacts of over-cultivation. European corporations, i

Since the 1920’s and 1930’s things have changed. Africa has gone through independence, through civil war after civil war, through more disease, through more famine, through the beginning and end of apartheid to the outcome which is today. Today, the lands of Africa are still “underdeveloped” according to neocolonialists like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and unsustainable agricultural development continues to be pawned off on Africa through these international organizations’ policies. Apartheid has ended in Africa; sovereignty has returned to the people. It is a matter of finding the political and economic strength to say no to the World Bank and IMF; it is a matter of refusing such policies as Terminator and GMO cultivation. Africa has obtained its freedom, and it will not let itself be taken advantage of again. Today, the lands of Africa are being developed strategically, with environmental sustainability as the end goal.

n response to international market demands, began to put more pressures on the colonies in Africa, especially on agricultural goods, such as rubber trees, palm oil, cotton, and other cash crops that began to be grown in large quantities. The result of the corporate harvesting led to an increase in soil erosion, as to be expected. While the corporations continued to place pressures on African land and labor, the rest of the world witnessed the Dust Bowl in the United States. European government officials began to consider the effects of European agricultural policies, as well as indigenous forms of agricultural practice on the economy. Thus, during the 1920’s and 1930’s the movement to develop the colonized began.

This was all to be accomplished through a program called, “Colonisation Indigené.” The program, which was trialed throughout the French colonies in Africa and which was most successful on Office Du Niger, a rice-cotton plantation in Sudan, had the goal to Anglicize the African culture. When a family was economically pressured into taking part in the Colonisation Indigené, they were signed into an arrangement that was much like a plantation-peasantry fusion. They were forced to use oxen drawn plows to cultivate their own plots of land, intensive cultivation was used rather than extensive nomadic farming, and crop rotations were begun (Van Beusekom, 302). The plow, as discussed earlier, was a tremendous mistake in Africa, and the amount of harvesting that was promoted was definitely a threat to the soil. Thus was the case of France: presuming agricultural superiority before concrete research had been done. The program went a step further though, into the social sphere, and began to promote private property. Triumphantly, the Africans ignored the boundaries on their plots of land, and paid more attention to their unofficial crops than their forced crops (Van Beusekom, 319). In the end, the program did not even provide the farmers with titles to their land as they were promised (Van Beusekom, 320). The consequences of Colonisation Ingené were, of course, tragic. The land had been ruined by the agricultural practices, the indigenous people were left with nothing to show for their hard work, land had been taken over by the French, and, in general, a bit of culture had been lost in

Some topics in this essay:
Van Beusekom, American Indian, Africa Africans, Depression Morocco, Throughout Africa, Depression Africa, France Britain, United European, French Africa, Morocco France, van beusekom, 1920’s 1930’s, land cultivated, beinart 62, agricultural practices, reserve system, land cultivated africans, density population, african populations, colonization namibia, sustain themselves, van beusekom 319, brush timber cutting, tribes sustain themselves, amount land cultivated,