The Agricultural Potential of the Humid Tropics

IN THE colonial days when European geographers, such as-Alexander von Humboldt and Albrecht Penck, first saw the luxuriance of tropical vegetation they were entranced and expressed optimism that with the application of modern technology rain forests could readily be cleared and sown to yield abundant harvests. The fact that the transformation has been slow and halting has often been attributed to the cultural and economic backwardness of the indigenous societies. Across the vast territory of the tropics are many so-called underdeveloped or developing nations. Even with the technical aids of the FAO and other agencies in recent years, agricultural growth in these tropical countries, particularly those in the humid tropics, has lagged behind that in the rest of the world. One can only conjecture whether the productivity of the tropics would have been different if white settlers had emigrated there en masse several hundred years ago and tended the land unaided by the native peoples. The factors to be considered are diverse and complicated. It is certain, however, that the Westerners have committed errors of such gigantic proportions as the undertaking of the Ford rubber plantation in the Amazon and the British groundnut scheme in East Africa. Clearly, the principles of land use that have evolved from mid-latitude experience cannot be applied directly to the tropics; the efficiency of tropical farming must be judged by a different yardstick. After centuries of trial and error, and with the recent developments in plant ecology, agricultural meteorology, soil science, and related fields, the agricultural potential of the tropics can now be assessed objectively and realistically. To be sure, the nature of agricultural problems varies greatly within the tropics. In the arid lands water reigns supreme over human occupancy; in areas of adequate rainfall other factors may be limiting. This study is concerned primarily with the humid tropics, where