African farming?

Question

which things do the farm in africa and how do they farm them?

thank you!

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Answer 1

Katie, As you no doubt know, Africa is not a country but a continent almost as big as North America, so as you can imagine, farming varies from the most modern to the most primitive. The climate from the harshest of desert to lush tropical landscape. I worked in two countries in West Africa for fourteen years and I can tell you a little about the farming there, but you can't take it that all farming in Africa is like it.

In Sierra Leone and Nigeria, the farming was about the same. They had two seasons the rainy season and the dry season. The dry season is about 6 months with no rain at all. the rainy season the same with enough rain to produce almost any crop they wanted. Farming was almost all by hand, slash and burn farming.  They cut all of the trees and brush from about two acres, allowed it to dry and burned it to ash. The ash provided the fertilizer for the crop ans the burning helped provide weed control. they could farm this area about two years, then would have to slash and burn another area. The old area would be allowed to grow back into trees and bush for about ten years before it was farmed again. As to the things they grew, cassava and rice were the main food crops along with corn, millet, groundnuts, and some tomatoes. It was mainly subsistence agriculture with sometimes a little extra they could sell at the market. The farmers were poor, but well fed and generally a happy people. Crop failure meant starvation until the next crop came in.