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Kofyar People
The Kofyar are a population in central Nigeria numbering around 50,000. After several anthropological studies, they provide good illustrations of how colonial authorities become unwittingly enmeshed in local politics; of sustainable subsistence agricultural production in crowded areas; of successful self-directed development of market-oriented agriculture; and of the use of "traditional" cultural resources to prosper in modern Nigeria. Colonial history The population known as the Kofyar actually comprises three different "tribes" as designated by British colonial officers: the Doemak (or Dimmuk), Merniang, and Kwalla. However the three groups have a common language, economic pattern, and origin myth, and had formed into a union called the Koffyer Federation in the 1940s; they have therefore been referred to as a single group by anthropologists. When first encountered by early British colonial authorities, they lived in the rugged hills in the southeastern corner of the Jos Platea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joshua Project
The Joshua Project is a Christian organization based in Colorado Springs, United States, which seeks to coordinate the work of missionary organizations to track the ethnic groups of the world with the fewest followers of evangelical Christianity. To do so, it maintains ethnologic data to support Christian missions. It also tracks the evangelism efforts among 17,000 people groups worldwide—a people group being "the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement," according to the project's website—to identify people groups as of yet unreached by Christian evangelism. History The project began in 1995 within the former AD2000 and Beyond Movement. From 2001 through 2005 the Joshua Project was at different times informally connected with the Caleb Project, and the International Christian Technologists Association (ICTA) and World Help. In 2006, the Joshua Project officially became part of the U.S. Center for World Mission, now called the Venture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benue Valley
The Benue River (french: la Bénoué), previously known as the Chadda River or Tchadda, is the major tributary of the Niger River. The river is approximately long and is almost entirely navigable during the summer months. The size of its basin is . As a result, it is an important transportation route in the regions through which it flows. Geography It rises in the Adamawa Plateau of northern Cameroon, from where it flows west, and through the town of Garoua and Lagdo Reservoir, into Nigeria south of the Mandara mountains, and through Jimeta, Ibi and Makurdi before meeting the Niger River at Lokoja. Large tributaries are the Faro River, the Gongola River and the Mayo Kébbi, which connects it with the Logone River (part of the Lake Chad system) during floods. Other tributaries are Taraba River and River Katsina Ala. At the point of confluence, the Benue exceeds the Niger by volume. The mean discharge before 1960 was for the Benue and for the Niger. During the followi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sorghum
''Sorghum'' () is a genus of about 25 species of flowering plants in the grass family (Poaceae). Some of these species are grown as cereals for human consumption and some in pastures for animals. One species is grown for grain, while many others are used as fodder plants, either cultivated in warm climates worldwide or naturalized in pasture lands. Taxonomy ''Sorghum'' is in the Poaceae (grass) subfamily Panicoideae and the tribe Andropogoneae (the same as maize, big bluestem and sugarcane). Species Accepted species recorded include: Distribution and habitat Seventeen of the 25 species are native to Australia, with the range of some extending to Africa, Asia, Mesoamerica, and certain islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Toxicity In the early stages of the plants' growth, some species of sorghum can contain levels of hydrogen cyanide, hordenine, and nitrates, which are lethal to grazing animals. Plants stressed by drought or heat can also contain toxic lev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearl Millet
Pearl millet (''Cenchrus americanus'', commonly known as the synonym ''Pennisetum glaucum''; also known as 'Bajra' in Hindi, 'Sajje' in Kannada, 'Kambu' in Tamil, 'Bajeer' in Kumaoni and 'Maiwa' in Hausa, 'Mexoeira' in Mozambique) is the most widely grown type of millet. It has been grown in Africa and the Indian subcontinent since prehistoric times. The center of diversity, and suggested area of domestication, for the crop is in the Sahel zone of West Africa. Recent archaeobotanical research has confirmed the presence of domesticated pearl millet on the Sahel zone of northern Mali between 2500 and 2000 BC. Description Pearl millet has ovoid grains of 3 – 4 mm length, the largest kernels of all varieties of millet (not including sorghum). These can be nearly white, pale yellow, brown, grey, slate blue or purple. The 1000-seed weight can be anything from 2.5 to 14 g with a mean of 8 g. The height of the plant ranges from 0.5 – 4 m. Cultivation Pearl millet is well ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peanut
The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible Seed, seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small and large commercial producers. It is classified as both a grain legume and, due to its high oil content, an oil crop. World annual production of shelled peanuts was 44 million tonnes in 2016, led by China with 38% of the world total. Atypically among legume crop plants, peanut pods develop underground (geocarpy) rather than above ground. With this characteristic in mind, the botanist Carl Linnaeus gave peanuts the specific epithet ''hypogaea'', which means "under the earth." The peanut belongs to the botanical Family (biology), family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), commonly known as the legume, bean, or pea family. Like most other legumes, peanuts harbor symbiotic Nitrogen fixation, nitrogen-fixing bacteria in root nodules. The capacity to fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima ''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown in West Africa around 3,000 years ago. In agriculture, it has largely been replaced by higher-yielding Asian r ...'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera ''Zizania (genus), Zizania'' and ''Porteresia'', both wild and domesticated, although the term may also be used for primitive or uncultivated varieties of ''Oryza''. As a cereal, cereal grain, domesticated rice is the most widely consumed staple food for over half of the world's World population, human population,Abstract, "Rice feeds more than half the world's population." especially in Asia and Africa. It is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize. Since sizable portions of sugarcane and ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yam (vegetable)
Yam is the common name for some plant species in the genus '' Dioscorea'' (family Dioscoreaceae) that form edible tubers. Yams are perennial herbaceous vines cultivated for the consumption of their starchy tubers in many temperate and tropical regions, especially in West Africa, South America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Oceania. The tubers themselves, also called "yams", come in a variety of forms owing to numerous cultivars and related species. Yams were independently domesticated on three different continents: Africa (''Dioscorea rotundata''), Asia (''Dioscorea alata''), and the Americas (''Dioscorea trifida''). Etymology The name "yam" appears to derive from Portuguese ''inhame'' or Canarian (Spain) ''ñame'', which derived from West African languages during trade. However in both languages, this name commonly refers to the taro plant (''Colocasia esculenta'') from the genus ''Colocasia'', as opposed to '' Dioscorea''. The main derivations borrow from verbs me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slash And Burn
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegetation, or "slash", is then left to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year. Then, the biomass is burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash which makes the soil fertile, as well as temporarily eliminating weed and pest species. After about three to five years, the plot's productivity decreases due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, causing the farmers to abandon the field and move to a new area. The time it takes for a swidden to recover depends on the location and can be as little as five years to more than twenty years, after which the plot can be slashed and burned again, repeating the cycle. In Bangladesh and India, the practice is known as jhum or jhoom. Slash-and-burn is a type of shif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ester Boserup
Ester Boserup (18 May 1910 – 24 September 1999) was a Danish economist. She studied economic and agricultural development, worked at the United Nations as well as other international organizations, and wrote seminal books on agrarian change and the role of women in development. Boserup is known for her theory of agricultural intensification, also known as Boserup's theory, which posits that population change drives the intensity of agricultural production. Her position countered the Malthusian theory that agricultural methods determine population via limits on food supply. Her best-known book on this subject, ''The Conditions of Agricultural Growth,'' presents a "dynamic analysis embracing all types of primitive agriculture." (Boserup, E. 1965. p 13) A major point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of invention". Her other major work, ''Woman's Role in Economic Development'', explored the allocation of tasks between men and women, and inaugurated decades of subsequ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea to the south in the Atlantic Ocean. It covers an area of , and with a population of over 225 million, it is the most populous country in Africa, and the world's sixth-most populous country. Nigeria borders Niger in the north, Chad in the northeast, Cameroon in the east, and Benin in the west. Nigeria is a federal republic comprising of 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Abuja, is located. The largest city in Nigeria is Lagos, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world and the second-largest in Africa. Nigeria has been home to several indigenous pre-colonial states and kingdoms since the second millennium BC, with the Nok civilization in the 15th century BC, marking the first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Ecology
Cultural ecology is the study of human adaptations to social and physical environments. Human adaptation refers to both biological and cultural processes that enable a population to survive and reproduce within a given or changing environment. This may be carried out diachronically (examining entities that existed in different epochs), or synchronically (examining a present system and its components). The central argument is that the natural environment, in small scale or subsistence societies dependent in part upon it, is a major contributor to social organization and other human institutions. In the academic realm, when combined with study of political economy, the study of economies as polities, it becomes political ecology, another academic subfield. It also helps interrogate historical events like the Easter Island Syndrome. History Anthropologist Julian Steward (1902-1972) coined the term, envisioning cultural ecology as a methodology for understanding how humans adapt to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compost
Compost is a mixture of ingredients used as plant fertilizer and to improve soil's physical, chemical and biological properties. It is commonly prepared by decomposing plant, food waste, recycling organic materials and manure. The resulting mixture is rich in plant nutrients and beneficial organisms, such as bacteria, protozoa, nematodes and fungi. Compost improves soil fertility in gardens, landscaping, horticulture, urban agriculture, and organic farming, reducing dependency on commercial chemical fertilizers. The benefits of compost include providing nutrients to crops as fertilizer, acting as a soil conditioner, increasing the humus or humic acid contents of the soil, and introducing beneficial microbes that help to suppress pathogens in the soil and reduce soil-borne diseases. At the simplest level, composting requires gathering a mix of 'greens' (green waste) and 'browns' (brown waste). Greens are materials rich in nitrogen such as leaves, grass, and food scraps. Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
