Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Fussel, George Edwin: What is traditional agriculture

farming can certainly be found in the countries of south eastern Europe, and in no small proportion. The whole of the foregoing is based on the assumption, which seems justified by the literature, that the term "traditional" is given a very much more restricted meaning than it properly has. There does not seem to be a shadow of doubt that all the discussions and writings about this subject use the word simply to indicate the processes of farming practised today in what are known as the underdeveloped or emerged countries. The people of these countries live in places where the climate and natural vegetation, or lack of it, and the elevation and slope, have placed insurmountable obstacles in their path towards the adoption of the complex mechanised and scientific methods of the temperate lands. So far as I am able to judge there are two main systems that have remained practically static since prehistoric times in the parts of the world where they are still usual today. Formerly in some temperate lands the sytem was the first kind, known as slash and burn, or shifting cultivation, but is now, if I am not mistaken, confined to tropical Africa. The second, christened by someone „hydraulie cultivation" is to be found in the tropics, and especially where the terrain is mountainous. I do not know whether it is intended to transform the second method which is said to be over three thousand years old, but there have been, and presumably will be, concentrated efforts by functionaries of Western and North American civilisation, to transform the first, which had doubtless been customary in these lands since man first penetrated the forests of Central Africa. All of us know perfectly well what shifting cultivation is and how it works. A piece of land is roughly cleared of the natural vegetation, trees felled, bushes cut down and left to dry. This rubbish is then burned, and possibly the ash strewn on land roughly hoed with a primitive mattock, the seed scattered and left to grow. A variety of nutritive plants may be set in a mixture wierd enough to European eyes. The piece of land may be used for a couple of years, or possibly longer, until it is so weed choked as to be unproductive. It is then left to nature for anything up to fifteen years, and a new area cleared and used in the same way. This practically ensures that there is always a vegetative cover to protect the soil from the devastating effects of tropical rainstorms. Sporadic attempts to introduce the mechanised agriculture of the temperate zone have been far from successful. In some places these efforts have been more than a failure: they have been destructive. Clearing the forest cover from a large area, and then ploughing it with modern machinery laid that area open to the fury of the elements. The torrential rain splashed the soil granules several inches into the air, and when they dropped again a solid mass was formed from which all the plant nutrients had been washed away. The area became completely sterile and useless. The transformation in the place was from a moderately fertile system to nothing! In some parts of Africa, indeed fairly generally over the continent some new crops were introduced in colonial days. The Portugese are said to have been responsible for bringing maize to Africa some 300 years ago; cocoa was introduced to West Africa as a commercial crop — a money maker. Rice is said to have been brought from the east. Maize has become a widespread staple, but in a general sense farming in primitive Africa is still traditional, that is,