Farming

of cigarettes to about five packets a week. Most of these activities have been studied and described as “typical” for rural communities (Ellis, 2000:16).

Wild fires is undesirable because it is labour intensive and so only small heaps of dried matter is made at a reasonable distance in the cleared space to create fire breaks. Dried logs around are lit and in some cases they retain fire to complete the process. Women and children do the second stage of burning since it involves thorough wrecking of the half burnt matter. Locals reveal that burning releases nutrients in the form of ash which if washed by rain leaches into the soil as natural fertilizers. They also explain that burning helps to reduce soil compaction, increases water percolation and aeration and this is good for plant roots. Our Ikondo Kondo I host disclosed another importance of burning. Holding black soil in her hand, she explained that burning increases its water retention capacity and is good for plant nutrition. These explanations capture the soil science concept of bulk density; the resultant of the weight of the unit volume of a soil and its pore spaces. The pore spaces regulate the water and aeration status of soils, plant root penetration and development. Burning stops with the heavy rains by the end of March and tilling starts.

4.3.1.1 Food crops farming

Additional food crops farming practices include: tilling, seed varieties’ selection, planting, weeding, harvesting, storage and use. These inherited practices from past generations have undergone minor changes and households continue to farm on the lineage forest plots.

Land tillage is done with metal hoes produced by blacksmiths. Seeds are sown immediately after tillage. Locals are aware that their soils are strongly compacted and so they till in order loosen them and make the soils suitable for plant growth. Some are aware that tilling can open the soil to agents of soil erosion like wind and running water. Tilling is haphazard and in a slovenly manner. Conversational group interviews with elderly villagers reveal that the main food crops grown in both villages are not different from those indicated in a 1923 report (Carr, 1923). They grow plantains, bananas, cocoyams, beans, maize, caso, essaka, masua and pepper and in smaller quantities of yams, mbu, sugar cane, cassava and okra (some are dialect names). The villagers grow fruits like coconuts, mangoes, plums, pears, pawpaw, guava, lemon and oranges on their farms.

Mixed or inter-cropping; a common farming practice is confirmed by households and was observed on farms around settlements. For instance, beans, maize and coco yams are

inter-cropped and left to grow simultaneously. Plantains and bananas are inter-inter-cropped with cocoa plants. Groundnut, a leguminous plant, is intercropped with other crops while other leguminous plants are planted during the fallow period in a bid to enrich the soil. But, locals say when cassava is planted on a piece of land that formerly had ground nuts and beans, and then the latter grows well. This in scientific terms is explained by the symbiotic association between the atmospheric nitrogen fixing bacteria (nitrobacters) that harbour the root nodules. Esukutan villagers reported the practice of crop rotation and farm fallowing but Ikondo Kondo I people have not yet started practicing it because they were relocated just some six years back. None of the villages’ households admitted using inorganic fertiliser. Their argument is that “we do not have money to buy inorganic fertilizers and also food grown with it does not taste good”. Instead rotten cocoa pods are used as organic fertilizers for plants. Food crops farms are on average, less than one hectare per household since cultivation is to meet households’ needs and relative self-sufficiency. Garri, a product of cassava is the only food crop that has a good local and Nigerian market. Indigenes complained that ripe bananas are left to rot in the farms because of no buyer at home.

After planting in March, the next two months are devoted to intensive weeding and mulching. The weeds are removed with the hands while hoes are used to dig the soil and bury them around the crop. These activities are important to avoid; crops being invaded by weeds and heavy rains and strong winds that could cause soil erosion. This gives the crop stability, the decayed material increases soil fertility and plant growth”³⁹. Parents teach their kids at a tender age (about 10), through demonstration and explanation. Women revealed that mulching is important for crops’ stability and soil moisture. Weeding is selective as only the unwanted (grass and shrubs) are removed leaving the crop with vast growth opportunities. It is continuous because by the time locals finish weeding the entire farm, the corners that were weeded first would have been invaded by grass and so they go and start all over. Mostly members of the domestic group provide labour for weeding is as children reportedly accompany their mothers to the farm after school.

39Mrs. Awo, July 2006, Ikondo Kondo I, Interview transcription (trans. Pidgin to English)

Crops harvest starts immediately after the first phase of weeding, especially maize (takes between 3 and 4 months from the time of seeding for the kernels to ripen); beans (pods ripen in less than 80 days); and groundnuts (pods ripen in about 4 months from the date of seeding). Cassava is harvested year round that is why gari production is year round.

Cocoyams are harvested during the second phase of weeding; between January and February. It is not possible to measure the quantity of most food crops harvested because it is not done on the same day. Cocoa harvests for 2006 range from 50kg to about 10000 kg (10 bags), for Esukutan households. Ikondo Kondo I was relocated when their farms were not yet ready and so till date their cocoa farms have not yet started producing cocoa beans.

This village is relocated to an area that is about 25 km from Mundemba town, which has a farmers’ cooperative union that buys and exports cocoa and coffee from small holders but Ikondo Kondo I people have nothing to sell. While Esukutan households with limited market opportunities have bigger cocoa farms, cash crop farming was not common when Ikondo Kondo people were still leaving inside the Korup National Park. “This is why many people abandoned seedlings that were donated by government agencies during the time of resettlement”⁴⁰. However, things are getting better and Ikondo Kondo I people are slowly being transformed from a purely hunting and gathering lifestyle that characterize their histories inside the national park to agriculturalists. “Since 2000, people have been adapting to an extent that if some are asked to go back to the old village they will refuse.

There was hunger but now people are cultivating bigger farm plots to sell the surplus”⁴¹.

4.3.1.2 Cash crop farming

Cash crop farming involves palms and cocoa in small-scale plantations. The former is also consumed at the level of the household but the latter is entirely for export. Cash crops are planted in rows with some sort of uniform distance between each seedling. Locals reveal that palm trees originated from that forest and their fathers propagated their wildings. They cut down some overcrowded palm plants to ensure proper growth conditions for the desired germinating palm seedlings. Rodents eat the seeds of palms and also help to spread very few of them which end up germinating in different parts of the forest. This uneven

40Ikondo Kondo I village council secretary, July 2006: personal communication in Ikondo Kondo I village

41Government chief Awoh Simon of Ikondo Kondo I, 16 July, 2006: Formal interview, Mundemba town

distribution of palms in the forest and the need to produce large quantities of palm oil for home consumption force many households to nurse seedlings in small nurseries behind or besides their house (See Chapter 3). Meanwhile Esukutan households trace the source of cocoa seedlings to as far back as the German colonial rule, Ikondo Kondo I households say they got their seedlings from the government of Cameroon during the relocation process.

There are a series of activities related to cocoa farming, which are graded according to seasons and months of the year as disclosed by the highest cocoa producer in Esukutan in 2006. Cocoa farms are cleared between October and November, slashed material wreckage and burning takes place thereafter. Seedling transplant is around March because it is not too hot and not too wet. Planting is in rows and at a distance of about 4 meters between the seedlings. Manual slashing is done along the tree rows or around young plants to keep away weeds. Farmers do not use herbicides because they are too expensive. When matured leaves of cocoa plants fall off, they provide leaf mulch and together with the heavy shading of the complete canopy inhibit weed growth. So, weeding is occasional to remove woody weeds. Shading by other plants and trees also helps to reduce light penetration. Pruning to develop the preferred structure and limit tree height is done between February and March.

To prevent high levels of yield loss, pests and disease control is given much attention. This involves the use of Gammalin 20, 80 or recently, Calisulfan 360 EC as the major insecticides to fight Black Pod (phytophthora fungus), and viruses like Swollen Shoot and Vascular Streak Dieback. These pests attack mostly during the rainy season and years of prolonged rainfall means too much investment in buying these chemicals. They are bought using savings from the previous years. A majority of households who lack capital enter in to a deal with suppliers of these chemicals. The cost is often too high but the return is in kind (cocoa beans equivalent to the cash value of the chemicals supplied). Cocoa plants need between 5 to 8 years to start producing cocoa beans that could be harvested and sold.

Harvesting could be all year round but the main harvest periods spans from July to September and is done by mostly males. They use hand cutlasses to cut pods from the tree instead of pulling as it can damage the flower cushion or tear the bark of the tree. The cocoa pods are left lying under the parent tree while children and sometimes women use

baskets to collect and pile the pods on a heap. A separate day is allocated for breaking open the pods to release the beans using cutlasses. Leaves from banana plants are cut and spread on the ground and the bags containing cocoa beans are put on then and wrapped and left to ferment. This takes about a week to complete. The fermented beans are then dried in the sun or using locally constructed ovens. After which dry beans are hand sorted to remove debris and defective beans. The sorted beans are put in bags and ready for marketing.