The Strange Farmers of the Gambia

Just when this immigration of seasonal labor began is uncertain. J. H. Palmer, author of the above quotation,' says it has been going on for 90 years, and probably much longer. Before the groundnut crop became important there were most likely immigrants who came for petty trading and who probably worked for the means wherewith to purchase their 'stock in trade.' By 1852, Governor MacDonnell was reporting that at least one third of the produce exported was groundnuts grown by strange farmers who came from the interior and stayed for two or three years. During the last several decades the relation between the strange farmer and the groundnut crop has been clear enough (see Table I). The Gambia is comparatively sparsely populated. In 1946 the total population of the Protectorate2 was only 228,114, or 56.9 to the square mile, and this is a substantial increase over prewar figures.3 On the other hand, there has been, and still is, an economic urge to grow groundnuts, a crop to which the light, lateritic soils covering much of the Protectorate are eminently well suited.4 During the years I9301934 the Gambia ranked sixth among the groundnut-exporting countries of the world, contributing 3.62 per cent of the total.