Hitting the fields....

Running with some of the themes of my last post, I figured I'd through up a brief explanation of the farming practices within my community. Also heard through the grape vine, I choose not to use the word criticism cause I ain't bothered, that people might be itching for some more practical topic matter.
Pagazaa is what I term a subsistence plus farming community, by which I mean they generally always meet their basic needs and thus are able to approach agriculture more as a business venture, as well as engage in other income generating activities such as petty trading or trade work. Community organization and crop diversification seem to be critical catalysts to this success, but since I've only really explored this one case I don't have any concept of whether this is a unique feature or indicative of most communities. Taking Mustapha as an example, he farms rice, maize(kinda African corn), yam, cassava, and groundnuts(peanut like), and not in small quantities either. Maybe that needs a disclaimer, compared to many subsidence farmers his 6 acres of groundnuts is a huge field, but not so much so when measured against the 1500+ acre industrialized scenario we see back home. I think this ability to farm on such a relatively large scale is completely predicated on the presence of the tractor. Haven't been able to get a concrete answer as to how the arrangement works, but here's what I've garnered so far. It seems to be something that is either communally owned, or is a service that everyone contributes to , and that the system of whose field gets plowed and when is fairly intricate. Literally it's been operating day and night since the beginning of the rainy season, and gives the farmers a massive leg up by removing the need for them to till their fields manually. Speaking of that, manually working a farm = balls...no jokes I've been working the groundnut farm lately and I'm surprised every one's back here ain't totally shot. The work ethic of the farmers is incredible though, take Mustapha for example, he gets up around 4.30 for morning prayers, goes to the farm till around 8, then teaches in the school till 2ish, before heading back out to the fields till around 7.30 or so at night. That's a weekday, so you'd think he'd chill out some on the weekend right? Nope, he just uses the time that he would have been teaching to stay on the farm longer, honestly I don't know how he keeps it up. That was a bit of a tangent..what was a talking about, ahh..community farming. So the people in the village have this communal labor practice, wherein once a week or so everyone from the village comes and works of the land of a particular family. Pretty impressive sight to see hundred or so men, women and children, working a small plot by hand. Exceeding practically as well, since the community was able to completely weed Mustapha's groundnut farm in one day, which then freed him to put more work into some of his other crops without suffering any consequences. Another major aspect of farming culture I've noticed is the manner in which skills and knowledge or conveyed to the children of the family. From the time that they can walk a child is brought out to the farm constantly, even though lots of them aren't able to contribute anything meaningful. The principle is that they thus learn though observation, so that when they are able to work the fields the learning curve is basically non-existent. Children from say 11+ are also given their own mini-fields, where in the can plant whatever they want, thought they seem to all choose yam and groundnuts from what I've seen. One of the kids a live with Hanan, 13, has this yam field where, no lie, the mounds are easily over half as tall as he is! A side note to this is that these mini-plots only seem to be given to male children, since males are viewed as the administrators of the farm while women are just generic labor. Also yam is viewed as the most powerful, masculine crop, so that's likely why the children gravitate to it.
In terms of agricultural inputs and add-ins the only one's present in the 'pag appear to be a minimal amount of herbicide that is applied to the maize and rice crops. I haven't really noticed, or heard of, any fertilizer use, thought there is an epic amount of livestock so it's definitely, ah, naturally abundant! With regards to seeds the heavy emphasis is on having large enough yields that you are able to a lot a portion for use as seed next year. Purchasing seed seems to be a last resort, only happening under unexpected conditions, like drought the previous year, and even then seed is generally bought and sold within the village as opposed to looking to outside traders.
Tried to cram a lot into this one, so hope it all came across ok, and if you got any questions feel free to throw them up. If I don't know the answer I'm more than game to dive into village to try and figure it out.
Stick on the ice but elbows up.
...didn't anyone see the pickups detroit made? Re-sign Stuart and sign Hossa! Looking like it might be a repeat for the winged wheel...