Agricultural issues two
Siam weed, Chromoleana odorata .
In Nigeria it was known as Queen
Elizabeth (2) weed. Its first emergence and spread was noted at
the time that Nigeria
became independent. Queen
Elizabeth attended the celebrations and wore a hat with some flowery
theme, which the Nigerians thought bore a very close resemblance to the
flowers of this
new weed. Quite pretty actually.
The
serious side of this story was, as I understood it, that the weed was being
studied by a research facility in the Cameroons who obtained it from Asia. When they completed their
research it sort of found its way across the fence and the rest is history.
When
I started work in the Mid West of Nigeria in 1970 the weed was widespread and well
established and every year it edged further west towards Dahomey, now Benin.
It
smothered everything in its path and during the already too short rotation of
the shift cultivation of the fast growing population, any regeneration of even
a semblance of secondary bush was nil. When the farmers returned to this patch
it was simply burned off and all the nitrogen was lost.
The
government supplied seedlings of mixed species of forest trees to help
regeneration and even paid the farmers to plant them after they finished
farming in a particular area. But more often than not the money was kept, while
the bundles of seedlings were rotting away. It is a pity, that although the
problems were understood, the political will and courage was lacking in seeing the
implementation of those schemes. When education fails to change
a system which worked perfectly fine a hundred years earlier, but not now, when
the available land cannot sustain an ever growing population in that manner, a
scenario for disaster is created.
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