Paper short abstract:

This study argues that African farmers are capable of innovating indigenous initiatives to improve their farming system and natural resources management. Fieldwork based research has been carried out to examine the local initiatives developed by the rural farmers and pastoralists in central Nigeria.

Paper long abstract:

Conventional approaches to agricultural development in Africa underplay the potential of local initiatives and the gradual successes achieved by smallholder farmers.　 Marshy areas were marginally used in the research site about half a century ago. Although without any external assistance, Nigerian farmers have been able to mobilize local resources and gradually expand indigenous irrigation and scale of cash crops farming on lowlands. They have also gradually incorporated yams, a high valued exotic crop, into their upland farming system and dietary habit. The study examines the reciprocal natural resource use relationship between the farmers and the pastoralists. Findings suggest that pastoral groups in the research site have different strategies to maintain social ties with agricultural villages through the adoption of corralling contract. Pastoralists in the research site have developed their local agricultural initiative, which is the indigenous herding practice. By flexibly adjusting herding activities in accordance to subsequent changes in natural and human environments, Nigerian pastoralists are able to utilize the limited resources available in every time and space niche. The study on the farmers and the pastoralists in Nigeria demonstrates how rural communities have developed local agricultural initiatives to diversify their production system and to secure their natural resources need. African peasants are often assumed to be irresponsive to new innovation and reluctant to change, but through the evidences obtained by fieldwork, they are proven to be capable of generating indigenous solutions in response to gradual changes in the natural and human environments.