Tea for the Tillerman

The technology of tractors may seem less than enthralling nowadays. We have tractors that can do just about everything- thresh grain, dig holes, seed corn- all with the help of GPS so that the farmer in the cabin doesn’t even have to touch a single control. Here in the South of Cameroon, one is hard pressed to find land that is cultivatable with the help of tractors. With the Comice, the 2011 agric show, came a tractor assembly factory just a half a mile from my house. Here, outdated tractor technology is mostly out of the average farmers hands, primarily because of financing, but also because most of the land that the average farmer farms in the South is hilly, rocky, and often laden with trees or tree stumps. These factors, combined with the fact that Ebolowa is really just out of the way from major ports, or the entire North (which is, in contrast, cultivatable by tractor), just emphasizes poor government planning.

Aside from the fact that I believe that this factory will likely lead to environmental issues, particularly polluted water (in an area where people still rely on untreated ground water), I also get more and more upset everyday by the fact that Ngalane is slowly becoming an industrial park. This is evidenced by the presence of increasing numbers of shipping containers filled with tractors littering the site of the Comice. And even though people farm past the grounds of the Comice, the tractor factory owners bought out the land where they are storing the shipping containers and have now put a gigantic fence around their newly acquired land. This means that my neighbors who used to be able to take short cuts directly through the site of the Comice are now forced to walk around the entire perimeter when most of the area inside is not even being used. And I don’t know who to be more angry at: the tractor assembly factory for not caring about the people who use the land, or my neighbors because they sold their land in the first place in order to have a really good Christmas 20 years ago.

But the reality is the tractor assembly factory is here and they are here to show off what they can do. There are several hectares of land that are flat and relatively free of tree stumps right by me. These fields are found on the Comice land, and are cleared of tree stumps because the government cleaned out the fields several decades ago in anticipation of the Comice. Now, post-Comice and in order to test the usefulness of the tractors, the tractors are sent out to clear a few hectares of land. But, instead of using the green manure from cut grasses to help fertilize the soil, they sent out manual labor to burn the piles of cut grasses. Then, they resend out the tractors to till the soil, which is now conveniently free of nutrients, and then they send out more manual labor to seed the site. It is so frustrating to watch the teams of men working together to make piles of dead grasses to burn. What is the point of a tractor, particularly in the 21st century, knowing what we know, if you’re going to interrupt its work with underpaid manual labor? Doesn’t anyone read? If you’re going to have the costs of tractor upkeep, you might as well get the most bang for your buck. Or you should probably just try something cool and innovative, like NOT burning the grasses, but rather using them as organic manure. In America, we talk about no-till farming, organic farming, niche farming. If Cameroonians with the capability to make large financial investments simply looked at trends in other parts of the world, I think worldviews could be transformed. Instead, they are just going to do something mediocre at best.