Upland and swamp rice farming systems in Sierra Leone: the social context of technological change

Abstract

IntroductionIt is thought that African rice (Oryza glaberrima), domesticated from the annual wild rice Oryza barthii, a plant of savanna river valleys and water holes, may have been first cultivated along the valley of the upper and middle Niger (Portères, 1970; Harlan, 1975). Cultivation under high rainfall conditions in the forest zone followed the development of ‘upland’ cultivars. Today, farmers in the drier savannas continue to depend on the seasonal rise and fall of flood water in valley bottom land for rice cultivation, and on occasion, this has developed into fully-fledged ‘irrigation’ agriculture (Linares de Sapir, 1970; Loquay, 1980), but elsewhere in the West African rice zone rain-fed ‘upland’ cultivation techniques now predominate. Where rainfall is more reliable ‘upland’ cultivation tends to be preferred because of its greater efficiency of labour use, but, as in ancient times, the occasional supplementary use of swamp to cope with bad years is not uncommon. This paper focuses attention on rice farming systems in Sierra Leone. Rice cultivation probably reached this area several thousand years ago (Atherton, 1979). Although in a few instances regular use of swamp land dates back to the later part of the nineteenth century (e.g. in the Bumban valley and the tidal swamps of the Scarcies estuary: Fyle, 1979, Carpenter, 1978) ‘upland’ cultivation still retains its former importance over large parts of the country.