The state and the peasantry: Agricultural policy, agricultural crisis and sustainability in the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria, 1900--1995

In recent years, low agricultural productivity, food insecurity and environmental degradation have become more apparent in many African societies. These trends have threatened the ability of farmers to increase productivity and to practice sustainable agriculture. This thesis contributes to the understanding of agricultural change in the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria from 1900 to 1995. Its principal proposition is that the stagnation of agricultural production in the region was largely the result of an excessive dependence upon export crops in the state's agricultural policies; the top-to bottom approach of government programmes, which neglected peasant initiatives; and the demographic and environmental condition of Igboland, which for the most part limited the ability of rural farmers to increase productivity. By collating data from interviews with Igbo informants and combining them with those of colonial documentary sources, this study shows how the intervention of the state in agriculture generated the agricultural crisis in a region that was already afflicted with very high population and diminishing land resources. The Igbo responded in various ways to the crisis generated not only by state intervention and high population, but also by poor soil, diminishing farmlands, the structural changes brought about by the civil war, and the development of the petroleum industry. They responded partly through large-scale migration and partly by engaging in non-agricultural income-generating activities. This study makes a significant contribution to the existing scholarship by incorporating peasant voices as agents of their own history. This dissertation demonstrates that the agricultural crisis in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa has been misunderstood because the analysis often ignores how state development ideology interacted with local ecological conditions and peasants' actions to structure the forms of changes in peasant economies. The study challenges the overwhelming macro-level focus on agricultural crisis and the neglect of regional experiences and contributes to a fuller understanding of the nature of African agricultural crisis.