Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0220/02203.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 32KB | 497 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02203}
$Pretitle{238}
$Title{Liberia
Chapter 3B.   Land Resources}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald P. Whitaker}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{rice
acres
production
tons
land
percent
early
liberia
rubber
farms}
$Date{1984}
$Log{Figure 8.*0220301.scf
}
Country:     Liberia
Book:        Liberia, A Country Study
Author:      Donald P. Whitaker
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1984

Chapter 3B.   Land Resources

     More than 80 percent of Liberia's soils can be used for agriculture.
About 75 percent of all soils were formed on the extremely old, largely
granitic gneisses and other gneissic and schistic bedrock that underlie most
of the country. Classed as latosols, they have been intensively leached by the
heavy tropical rainfall and are of only medium to low fertility. These are the
soils on which upland rice, the largest single food crop, is grown. Their
limited amount of plant nutrients requires, without the use of fertilizer, a
constant shifting of cultivation to new fields in order to maintain
subsistence production levels. Large areas of these soils also support the
country's major tree crops (see Commercial Crops, this ch.). Of the remaining
soils, an estimated 17 percent, found mostly in hilly and mountainous areas,
are lithosols (soils that are characterized by imperfect weathering and low
humus and mineral nutrient content). Although they support tree and other
woody vegetation, these soils have little value for agriculture. Other soils
include sandy varieties (about 2 percent) found along the coast that are
generally infertile (although they support large numbers of coconut trees, as
well as oil palms), alluvial soils in the river bottoms, and swamp soils. The
alluvial soils, when drained and fertilized, are well suited to growing swamp
rice and other crops. Swamp soils, especially those known as half bog soils,
are naturally rich in humus, and when drained they provide excellent
conditions for swamp rice.

[See Figure 8.: Areas Generally Suitable for Commercial Tree Crop Cultivation]

     Although there have been some local soil surveys, countrywide data were
insufficient in mid-1984 for a broad evaluation of soil potentials and
agricultural suitabilities. For the near future, however, cultivable land to
meet the needs of the subsistence population, as well as for expansion of
export tree crops, was quite satisfactory. According to estimates of the Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the early 1980s, only about 1,430 square
miles of the country's total land area (roughly 3.9 percent) were used for
cultivation. Permanent tree crops, such as rubber, coffee, and cacao, occupied
946 square miles, or two-thirds of the cultivated area; short-life crops,
mainly foods, were produced on about 485 square miles. FAO also calculated
that more than 21,000 square miles of additional land was in temporary bush
and tree fallow-much of it at a stage available for agricultural use (see
Forestry, this ch.). There was little pressure on the fallow areas in the less
heavily populated rural regions, and about 80 percent of the subsistence
farmers in those regions were reportedly using for crops new land on which the
age of the tree or bush stands was seven or more years. The situation was
different, however, in heavily peopled areas near the towns where the fallow
cycle on good land has been found to be as short as four years, a period
generally inadequate to allow the replacement of natural soil nutrients.

Land Tenure

     In 1984 almost all land was the property of the state. The principal
exception consisted of a relatively limited amount held in freehold, located
almost entirely in urban areas; some plantation and other commercial farm
operations were also privately owned. Under the Constitution approved in 1984,
private property rights did not include the rights to any mineral resources on
or beneath the land or on land beneath the sea and the waterways of the
country. Moreover, where land was held in fee simple, it could be held only by
Liberian citizens. An exception to the latter proscription allowed ownership
by noncitizen educational, missionary, and benevolent institutions as long as
the holding was used for the purposes for which it was acquired. Property no
longer so used reverted to the state.

     A considerable part of public land was statutorily held by subsistence
agriculturists under a system of tenure based on traditional customary law.
The traditional principles and practices of land tenure differed in detail
among various ethnic groups, but all were based on the fundamental concept of
communal rather than individual proprietorship. The land itself was under the
control of the chief or headman, who held it in the form of an ancestral trust
and administered it as the legal representative of the community. With the
permission of the chief or headman, each household selected an area to be
farmed for its own needs. The size of the area depended on the size of the
household and the labor requirements that it could meet. In the early 1980s
the average subsistence household, estimated to consist of five to seven
people, cultivated about three acres of upland rice and one to two acres of
other crops.

     Subsistence farmers in general were secure in their tenure under
customary law, but the lack of a registered title in some cases acted as a
disincentive to land improvement because of the inability of the farmer to
obtain credit for its development. The expansion of roads in rural areas has
reportedly resulted in the speculative securing of titles to land by
nonfarmers. In the areas encompassed by the government's major agricultural
development projects, project authorities were assisting farmers to obtain
title before infrastructure improvements attracted outside land buyers.

     Acquisition of public land by foreigners was possible through
leasehold; some Liberians also acquired land on that basis. Leases were
ordinarily for 20 years, but exceptions were permitted by law (the concession
held by the Firestone Plantations Company, granted in 1926, was for 99 years).
Other government land was acquired by Liberians under regular titles for
plantations and commercial farms. These organizations used hired labor, and
limited use of wage workers was made even by subsistence farms experiencing
labor shortages because of the migration of family members to urban areas,
Tenancy, sharecropping, and other systems of nonownership cultivation,
however, did not appear to be generally practiced in 1984.

Traditional Agriculture

     The traditional small agriculturists produced most of the country's food
crops. Estimated to number about 160,000 households in the early 1980s, their
total production and related economic activities accounted for about 18
percent of GDP. About 90 percent of the households cultivated rice, and about
70 percent also grew cassava. Other crops included maize, yams, taro, okra,
sugarcane, peanuts, and assorted vegetables. Bananas and some citrus fruit
were also grown around farmhouses. Additionally, one of every four to five
households had a small section of land, averaging between about one-half an
acre and one acre, on which coffee or cacao trees were grown to provide cash
income. Rice, which constituted more than 90 percent of the smallholder
output, was grown under rainfed conditions. The generally low fertility of
soils and the nutrient needs of the rice plant to produce a reasonable harvest
forced farmers to clear new land each year for their rice crops. In the new
area most of the large trees were cut down and burned; the ashes returned to
the soil minerals that, along with organic materials accumulated during the
fallow period, furnished sufficient nutrients for one crop of rice. If the
soil was then not too infertile, it was used for a second or third year to
grow cassava and peanuts, after which it was left to return to bush fallow.
The system of short cultivation periods and the succeeding fallow term of
usually ei