Contenu du sommaire

The Rwandese tea cultivation and production. — As far back as 1954, the Government of Rwanda has tried to diversify its sources of income. Ranked second after coffee, tea is today the cash crop in the higland marshes and in the hills between 1 600 and 2 500 m. For a population accustomed to a severe way of life, tea provides a possible new monetary income. Moreover, tea has paved the way for the setting up of agro-industries in rural areas. This industrialization has provided employment opportunities, has built up financial disponibilities at grass root level, and has supplied the Government with additionnai income resulting from exportations.

Coffee Growing and the Social-Economic Development of Uélé, Zaïre. — Uélé, the principle Robusta coffee producing region of Zaïre, has undeniable assets (abundant rainfall, rich soil with intrusion of mineral salts, low cost farm labor) for the development of this agricultural export produce. The adoption of this crop in the traditional peasant agriculture economy, mainly in the districts of Wamba, Rungu, Poko and Bambesa, is accompanied with important changes as regards foodstuff production (the ten-dancy to one-crop farming) as regards the agrarian and land property systems, and in the social structure (the rise of a new social class based on money).

Intensive Agriculture and the Supplying of Urban Centers ; the Case of the Foodstuff-Producing Perimeters of the Department of Agboville, Ivory Coast. — This article is a study of the present situation and growth of the areas in which rice and fresh vegetables are grown in the Agboville department. On those perimeters, which were created at the beginning of the 1970s, peasants working on a voluntary basis and supervised by State-controlled companies have engaged in forms of intensive agriculture. But various difficulties, natural hazards and, above all, too low prices, have slowed down production increase. And in addition, this form of agriculture is carried out more by town dwellers and landless peasants than by local farmers, who prefer to grow cocoa as it yields greater profits.

The Truck Farms of the Côte-sous-le vent, Guadeloupe : Farmers or Small Landowners. — During the sugar production crisis in the Southwest of Basse-Terre at the end of the last century, small domains were established in the most disadvantaged geographic areas. Since Guadeloupe became a French department in 1946, these small properties have broken away from the plantation system and progressively, but more and more distinctly in recent years, have oriented their production methods towards the needs of a local market, in full expansion on account of the growth of the tertiary sector. This change was encouraged by a striking evolution in the means of production-to which the Government contributed a great deal-and because of a massive influx of Haitian farm labor, from 1975, and who were employed clandestinely in order to increase vegetable output sharply. But the reality of these production methods is far from being the solution sought, and the present prosperity of these small, units can very well be only short lived. Indeed, it benefits from the «investor» character of the Guadeloupe economy and doesn't really lay the foundation for the creation of the self-sufficient economic system that one would like to see develop.