This paper examines subsistence agriculture from the perspective of European colonizers, analyzing why it was viewed as a problem and how colonial powers dismantled it. The paper argues that subsistence agriculture was not primitive, as European literature claimed, but rather a sustainable system that empowered indigenous peoples. Using the West Indies and West Africa as examples, it traces how colonizers replaced food-producing traditions with cash crop economies through enslavement, forced taxation, land seizure, and price-control organizations. The paper concludes that these policies created dependency, famine, and lasting poverty in formerly self-sufficient regions.
From the point of view of European colonizers, subsistence agriculture was a "problem" because it was a source of empowerment for the peoples they sought to oppress. It was cast as primitive in European literature, but this so-called primitive form of agriculture had nourished communities for centuries. The real aim of the Europeans was to render colonial peoples useful to the Mother Country. Subsistence agriculture was also problematic for colonizers because it was designed to sustain people rather than to generate profits. It produced only what was needed for a small community, rather than crops for the mass marketplace.
An excellent example of this can be seen in the West Indies. Before Europeans arrived in the region, Africans had a vibrant, rich, and diversified system of agriculture that 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 region was transformed into an agricultural sugar-producing economy, the tradition of sustainable agriculture was destroyed.
This is why today many parts of Africa struggle to feed their populations — a reality that often confuses the developed world, which once oppressed these regions and dismantled their indigenous traditions. The extinction of staple food farming, such as rice cultivation in nations like Ghana, in favor of export cash crops like peanuts, contributed directly to famine.
The so-called problem of subsistence agriculture was remedied through a system of enslavement and oppression. In the nineteenth century, when outright slavery in West Africa was no longer politically tenable, indigenous farmers were forced by government policy to grow cash crops. Sometimes physical force was used directly. Peasants were also heavily taxed to compel their participation in the cash crop economy. Taxes were remitted only if farmers agreed to devote a specific portion of their land to cash crops. In other cases, land was simply seized by the ruling government, divesting farmers of their property and forcing them into homelessness, poverty, and hunger.
"Colonial boards and land seizure suppressed farmer power"
"Plantation systems created lasting dependency and poverty"
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.