Why Can\'t People Feed Themselves?

¶ … People feed themselves?

Why was subsistence agriculture a problem from the perspective of European colonizers?

From the point-of-view of the European colonizers, subsistence agriculture was a 'problem' because it was a source of empowerment for the individuals they desired to oppress. It was cast as primitive in European literature, but this 'primitive' form of agriculture had nourished people for centuries. The real aim of the Europeans was to render colonial peoples useful to the Mother Country. Subsistence agriculture was also problematic for the Europeans because it was primarily designed to sustain people, rather than to generate profits. The agriculture produced only what was needed for a small group of people, rather than crops for the mass marketplace.

An excellent example of this can be seen in the West Indies. Before Europeans came to the region, Africans had a vibrant, rich, and diversified system of agriculture, which provided many forms of food for its people. However, the West Indies were seen as useful to England for one reason alone -- as a place to farm the cash crop of sugar. After the population was enslaved and the nation was transformed into an agricultural sugar-producing region, the tradition of sustainable agriculture was destroyed. This is why today the 'poor people' of Africa cannot feed themselves, much to the confusion and dismay of the developed world which once oppressed it and destroyed its indigenous traditions. The extinction of the practice of farming staple foods like rice in nations such as Ghana in favor of cash crops like peanuts produced famine.

Q2. How was this problem solved?

The so-called problem of subsistence agriculture was remedied through a system of enslavement and oppression. In the 19th century, when the outright slavery practiced in West Africa was no longer tenable, indigenous farmers were forced by government policy to grow cash crops. Sometimes force was used, including physical force. Peasants were also heavily taxed to force them to participate in the cash crop economy. Taxes were only remitted if they agreed to devote a specific portion of their land to cash crops. Or their land was simply seized by the ruling government and they were divested of their property, forcing them into homelessness as well as poverty and hunger.

To reduce the amount of leveraging power the farmers could have in setting a price for their crops, national governments created organizations like the West African Coca Control Board to set the price of coca in a uniform fashion. This was supposed to give farmers a more fair price than could be obtained solely from negotiating with more powerful private businesses, but ultimately the result was the same -- the colonial powers profited far more off of the crops of the farmers, despite the fact that the farmers were doing the lion's share of the work to harvest these valuable products. However, the farmers who were merely economically exploited by the colonial government could count themselves lucky compared with farmers whose land was simply taken away from them in the name of the crown. The land was designated public territory or given over to private businesses. In almost all of these instances, the cash crops that the farmers were forced to grow were coffee, tobacco, and sugar -- products with no nutritional value.