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Of Yams and Cocoa Farmers: Lessons For the Petro-dollar Economy, By Oluwadele Bolutife

by Premium Times
March 28, 2020
Reading Time: 5 mins read
0

Although the petrol-dollar brought vast fortunes to us, like the situation of the cocoa farmer from the first season, our planning mentality never exceeded that of a yam farmer. That we cannot generate sufficient electricity today for our teeming population is a clear indication of our lousy planning. Therefore, like the yam farmers, we suffer cycles of starvation…


For a start, I am not an Economist like my good friend, ‘Tope Fasua, which means I will again be relying on my village intelligence in this article. I’ll also like to add that this is not a researched article, so there will be no need to quote any authority to back up my argument.

Having observed over the years the significant differences between farmers who specialised in planting yam and their quick turnovers, and the cocoa farmers who need to exercise patience, I have come to understand the differences between the short term and the long-term perspectives.

The gestation period for yam is about six to seven months, from its planting to harvesting, whereas, at least in the olden days before the advent of improved varieties, the cycle of the cocoa produce took about five years to attain fruition.

Within a short period, an average yam farmer is already smiling home with a bountiful harvest. And quite unfortunately, this could also mark the beginning of reckless consumption which culminates in a vicious yearly cycle of ‘starvation.’ From late June to early March of the following year, there are revels of ‘noise-making’ pounding of yam during the day. Some will pound on the farm, and their wives will still pound yam for them at home, day in, day out. To show the strength of the farmers’ exploits, all kinds of festivals are organised between July and January, which are heavily dependent on the voracious consumption of yam in its various forms. By March the following year, most would have run out of yams. Only a few would still have sizable barns with some yams left in them.

From March to mid-June, there would be a lot of complaints about starvation. Although, in a somewhat revolutionary manner, some will start mixing cassava flakes (gari) with the few yams left to give a semblance that they are still eating pounded yam.

I recall once having a conversation with an uncle of mine, a professor, who I told that if I were in a position of authority, I would confiscate all the mortars and pestles in farms, and legislate that no one should ever pound yam in the farm again. All pounding must be restricted to the home and not more than once a day. He looked at me, shook his head, and said: “they will curse you, this boy.” I responded that if that will cure the cycle of yearly starvation in the farmsteads, then I cared less about any curse. He dismissed me, saying I was just making noise in Lagos.

After March, the farmers have to wait till early June for the seasom of maize harvest. Once maize is out, folks make a variety of food from that too: Pap, corn-based ‘akara’ and ‘agidi’, etc. In my dialect, there is a famous saying that “ka magbado ja gbado, uyan titan” (until we have combined meals of maize, the ‘famine’ has not ended). To us, then, this combination is both a hope and a relief that yam will soon mature so that we can resume the thrice a day consumption of pounded yam. During the period of surplus yam, it was a punishment to ask even a small boy to eat eba after school. I know this may not be the same all-over Yoruba land, but that used to be the pattern in Ekiti during my early years.

At the corner during this period is the cocoa farmer gently tendering his plantation and counting the number of years remaining to have the first harvest. Yet, he must survive the years to witness the harvest. By sheer providence, in most cocoa plantations, plantain grows by itself, and sometimes cocoyam. So, the cocoa depends on the plantain and cocoyams to survive. The farmers on those plantations, too, learnt to make an ‘amala’ variety from dried plantain, and some ‘moinmoin’ like variety also. Cocoyam equally served some pounding purposes for them.

However, in a twist of event, the moment cocoa hits its first season, the farmers get rid of the plantain totally. Hence the proverb in Yorubaland that, “ogede lo wo cocoa dagba ko to digi buruku” (roughly interpreted to mean “it was the plantain that nurtured cocoa before it became a forbidden plant”). On most plantations, the plantain was utterly weeded out. Do we recall Kollington Ayinla’s rendition about this in the early 1980s? Although it may look like wickedness, once the cocoa starts to produce, it no longer makes economic sense to allow the plantain to continue to share nutrients with it, thereby lowering its yield.

In most cases, after the first season, an average cocoa farmer will buy a Raleigh bicycle, build a house, and invest in infrastructure that may take an average yam farmer more than a decade to achieve. As time progressed, the bike was first replaced with a Suzuki motorcycle, and in the 1990s upward, a Peugeot 505 Evolution. That was the lot of cocoa farmers, and the deserved reward for their patience.

For Nigeria, there was a rather unfortunate twist.

Before oil became our economic mainstay, we depended on cocoa from the West; palm fruits and rubber from the mid-West; groundnut and cotton from the North-West; fish from South, in addition to regular food crops. As soon as the oil started flowing, all these were discarded in the like manner that the cocoa farmer discarded plantain.
Without sounding derogatory, the yam farmer hardly plans for anything!

Although the petrol-dollar brought vast fortunes to us, like the situation of the cocoa farmer from the first season, our planning mentality never exceeded that of a yam farmer. That we cannot generate sufficient electricity today for our teeming population is a clear indication of our lousy planning. Therefore, like the yam farmers, we suffer cycles of starvation, or recession, once there is a shock wave in the oil market. However, unlike the yam farmer, we don’t even control anything in the supply chain of the international oil market. Just as the yam farmer who organises all festivals around the yam season, our budget is consistently benchmarked against the price of oil, even when we shout diversification to high heavens. As it stands today, oil has finally lost out as the energy resource of choice.

All economies, if not the entire humanity as we know it today, will undergo a necessary reset, once we are out of this pandemic called COVID -19, as nothing will ever remain the same. What will become of our economy, post COVID-19? Are we going to start long term and endure some hardship? At the same time, will we try to build a healthier future, or we will go back to our default settings and keep moving around the vicious cycles of prosperity, austerity, recovery, posterity, and wastage? Or better still, combine the best of yam and cocoa farming and fashion out an integrated system that takes care of the present, without leaving the future to mere chance. What happens to us, if after COVID-19, if working online becomes the rule rather than the exception, with our wobbling infrastructure? Can we start thinking of refashioning our education to promote innovation, entrepreneurship, and away from rent-seeking and short-term gratification?

Let me conclude that this is not a deliberate attempt to deride my people from their age-long practices. Instead, it is a call to have a critical look at the contradictions of those practices, intending to effect the necessary changes that enhance our progress as a people.

It is your village boy, #JustThinkingAloud.

Oluwadele L. Bolutife, a chartered accountant and a public policy and administration scholar, writes from Canada. He can be reached through: bolutife.oluwadele@gmail.com

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