Thinking the African Food Crisis - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 781

andfoodcompelledhouseholdstoshittoof-farmoccupations,especiallywagelabor,
atthesametimethattheuseoffertilizersandtheplantingofthehybridvarietiesintro-
ducedintheearlierperioddecreasedsubstantially.MustaphaandMeagher(2000)esti-
mate in their rural Kano study that the proportion of grain-deficit families increased by
almost20 percentamongsmallfarmers(andbyalmostasmuchamongmediumfarm-
ers)between1989and1993.Newresearchthatmakesefectiveuseofanearliersurvey
byChrisUdryofYaleUniversitycomparesagrarianchangeoveratwenty-yearperiod
(1988-2008)amongfourcommunitiesnearZaria(inKadunaState),andissuggestivein
thisregard(DillonandQuilones2010;DillonandQuilones2011).heincreaseintotal
landcultivatedisconsistentacrossvillages,butlandlesshouseholdsincreasedby40 per-
cent.Landholdingsdecreasedbyalmostthreehectaresoverthetwenty-yearperiod,
whilethenumberofplotscultivatedbyhouseholdsalsodecreased.Plotsizesandtotal
land cultivated decreased, but access tolowland, fadama plots remained constant across
householdsbetweenthetwosurveyyears.Landrentals—almostnonexistentin1988—
are now widespread. Fallowing had in effect disappeared entirely, and farmers widely
endorsed the view that soil fertility is declining. Crop values per hectare increased, but
incomeefectswereradicallyshapedbystarkclassdiferences.Insum,theclassmapof
rural communities had changed, and was changing, dramatically, despite the picture of
“economic recession.”
This is a specifically Nigerian story, of course, in which oil wealth makes it a special
case. But the deepening commodification of land, labor, crops, and animals is the hall-
mark of the region as a whole. Unlike other parts of the continent, where purported
landgrabshaveshapedtheseagrariandynamics(haler,thisvolume),theWestAfrican
Sahel has largely avoided these most direct forms of primitive accumulation. The con-
nection between food prices and speculative activity in global food markets (especially
asinvestorswithdrewfromotherinstrumentsin2008) isanotherstory,onethatcer-
tainly is transforming the face of food provisioning. But to the extent the Sahel remains
a diverse peasant-based economy, the question of the prospects of smallholder agricul-
tureinthefaceofhardbutuncertainefectsofglobalclimatechange—thechallenges
ofadaptation,astheconventionalwisdomhasit—remainsattheheartoftheSahel's
future.Itisherethatahistoricalperspective—theperspectiveofoldageinmycase—has
much to offer.
Governing Food and Famine: The
Sahelian Laboratory
Inthe1970sthearidanddrought-pronedrylandsofWestAfricawerewhatTilley(2010)
callsan“Africanlaboratory.”heperiodbetweenthelate1960sandtheearly1980swas
a long decade of economic and political turbulence driven by the oil boom and bust, by
inancialliberalizationandthelaunchingofstructuraladjustmentprograms,andthe