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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Small Change: Individual Farm Work and Collective Life in a Western Nigerian Savanna Town,1969-88
Author:Guyer, Jane I.ISNI
Year:1992
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:62
Issue:4
Pages:465-489
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:Yoruba
small farms
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Labor and Employment
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161346
Abstract:A comparison of data collected in Idere, a small town in western Nigeria (the Yoruba area) in 1968-1969 and 1988 suggests that small-scale male farmers' patterns of work remained quite similar in the total amount of work they did and in the amount by task. This finding seemed surprising, since the study area lies in the food supply hinterland of the rapidly growing cities of Ibadan, Lagos and Abeokuta. The farming system had changed in several ways in response to increased urban demand and improved transport, including an increase in farm size on the part of male farmers. However, full-time farmers in 1988 still worked on the farm only about the same two-thirds of the days available and distributed their work very similarly among tasks. Changed cropping patterns, the increased use of hired labour and somewhat increased returns to labour seem only partly to account for the persistence. Analysis of the work data in terms of its timing, rather than in terms of time, suggests that farmers are tending to work at the same task in longer stretches of consecutive days, and this, in turn, is related to the marked rescheduling of traditional ceremonial life and the intensified politico-associational life moved to the weekend. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum in English and French.
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