Agriculture in Southern Nigeria (Excluding the Cameroons)

T nHERE is some confusion in the definition of terms used to classify indigenous systems of tropical agriculture, and disagreement with regard to the success of the methods employed. I t was shown in a previous paper' that "shifting cultivation" has been regarded by some writers as an all-embracing term for indigenous systems of tropical agriculture and by others as a term applied to only one system. While some have concluded that the methods of tropical cultivators are well adapted to the " natural" (especially the soil) conditions, others have described them as wasteful and in need of "reform." Recent research in tropical Africa has added considerably to the stock of information on the subject of tropical agriculture and has revealed the existence of a variety of cultivation methods. In the light of such information it would seem useful to apply the geographical approach to the study of the various systems of cultivation used in a particular region and to describe their distribution and their relationship to the physical environment. Southern Nigeria provides a sufficient number of examples to serve as a suitable field of study. For the purpose of this paper the region is defined as that part of Nigeria in which two crops may be planted in succession in a single