Notwithstanding the considerable quantities of data available, so far no
concerted policy has been developed and put into practice in order to
effectively enforce users (farmers, logging corporations) to redress their
modes of operation into ecologically more appropriate patterns of
behaviour. As a consequence, once described as 'the last frontier area' in
C6te d'Ivoire [Ruf 1984] the Tai region nowadays shows all the typical
symptoms of degrading natural resources; soil erosion, abandoned tree crop
plantations, noxious weed-infested areas, etcetera. In less than two decades
forested land has become scarce, and the gazetted park area is under
pressure from farmers in search of land.
The Agricultural University of Wageningen conducts a multi-disciplinary
research project 'Analysis and design of land-use systems in the Tai region',
which is part of the programme Ecosystkmesforestiers et systkmes de production
of the Ministry of Scientific Research of the Republic of C6te d'Ivoire.
The research in Tai concerns sustainable and productive use of land both
under natural forest and under agricultural crops.
Forestry research concerns the management of the 330,000ha of rain
forest of the National Park of Tai and the adjacent buffer-zone. Agricultural
research focuses on replacement of shifting cultivation by permanent
agricultural land-use in order to relieve pressure from an increasing population
on the forest reserve and its buffer-zone.
This paper discusses the cropping system of the Baoul6 tribe, and investigates
the impact of cropping techniques applied on the top soil. This ethnic
group has migrated into the Tai" area since the early 1960s, and nowadays
dominates small-holder agriculture. The Baoul6 introduced several agricultural
practices that radically differ from the autochthonous land-use pattern
in the region [De Rouw 1979]; complete removal of the original vegetation
from cropped fields, removal of the litter layer before soil preparation,
raising of mounds for the cultivation of yam, and, lastly, planting of perennial
crops instead of the traditional forest fallow.