How Tradition Threatens Agric Dev

By Idehen Eghosa

Tradition refers to the way of doing things, beliefs, customs, superstitions etc, handed down to a given people from one generation to another, generally accepted by them, firmly established as well as incorporated into their life styles.

In every society, anywhere in this world, most people beliefs in customs, superstitions etc, handed down to given people from one generation to another, generally accepted by them, firmly established as well as incorporate into their life styles.

In every society, anywhere in this world, most people believe in the existence of supernatural forces or spirits and their ability to control all human affairs. These beliefs are expressed continually by the people concerned through praise and worship, activities which they render to deities, ancestors, gods, festivals, taboos, superstitions, funeral rites etc.

The belief of a people can be regarded as their mental conviction, acceptance or opinion as to how things are and how they relate to an existing state of affairs or relationships. In some cases, belief may also pertain to factual matters or nonentity.

In Africa, for example, most of the indigenous cults and secret societies are tied to agriculture and knowing how they exert their influence on agriculture and its related activities is a pre- requisite to any meaningful life transforming agricultural development programmes geared toward eradicating hunger and poverty.

Traditional activities like funeral rites distract farmers from attending to the demands of farm works. The time and energy needed for essential farming activities are expended on the performance of funeral or burial rites.

In this part of the country, especially in the villages where the peasant farmers that are producing the bulk of the food needed to feed the many hungry mouths in the country dwells, traditional funeral rites, age group initiation ceremonies or other village festivals may take between 7 to 21 days. In case of funeral rites, this may be longer depending on whether the deceased was a chief or traditional title holder and at times, the period may be characterized with curfew or some forms of restrictions.

For the number of days needed for the performance of the burial rites or festivals, all farming activities in some areas no matter the stage during the growing season will be suspended and at the same time, such funeral rites imposes on the farm family an extra budgetary expenditure burdens on foods, meats, drinks, clothing materials or monetary fine which indirectly leads to depletion in the available money at hand left to be spent on the purchase of essential farm inputs like planting materials and farming implements.

Village festivals like age groups, new yam and other annual festivals dedicated to village or ancestral shrines as well as deities also constitute a serious threat to agricultural development, and closely related to these festivals are taboos and superstitions that pose as a constraints to meaningful agricultural developmental programmes of the government and extension efforts.

It is very significant to note that some of these festivities that are tied to cults and other secret societies forbid non – natives from carrying out their normal daily activities due to the imposition of curfew, and with severe physical as well as spiritual consequences for those who refuse to comply. In such circles, it is not uncommon to find taboos placed generally on some very important food and meat items of economic values. For example, it is a taboo for native or non-native to eat the flesh of snails, pigs, rabbits, dogs, monkeys etc. In some other areas, it is forbidden to eat or sell fresh products like new yam until the new yam festival has been performed and the gods being the first partaker.

 The economic implication of this to the farmer is that he cannot enjoy the economics of early production which usually commands higher prices in the markets because he has to comply with the norms of the society he is living in.

To the agricultural experts, this is certainly not a healthy development since in such areas, any research efforts geared towards increased production of such agricultural produce will be at conflicts with the beliefs of such people and it will be highly resisted stiffly to the detriment of agricultural development efforts.

Apart from taking the farmers off their farms and creating additional financial burdens on them, such traditional practices also affects to large extent, their farming patterns or cropping system. Extension workers must therefore co-operate with local traditions in other to avoid conflicts with them in the course of creating a teaching and training environment suitable for teaching the farmers to seek desired changes for themselves away from retrogressive traditions, customs, beliefs, taboos, superstitions etc

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