Colonialism Subverted Africa’s Food System –HOMEF

A group, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) has said colonialism subverted food system in Africa, thereby making farming to be for economic benefits and no longer a way of life.

HOMEF executive director, Reverend Nnimmo Bassey, disclosed this yesterday in Port Harcourt, while declaring open a one-day media training with the theme: “My Food Is African”.

He said: “The important position of indigenous food systems in the struggle for food sovereignty cannot be over emphasised.

“While it is true that colonialism is hugely built around political and economic planks, it also significantly impacts socio-cultural, environmental, agricultural, and other spheres. It impacts all these spheres by controlling and subverting what existed before the conquest.

“We need to emphasize these approaches: control and subversion. The subversion of food systems was intentionally constructed through the colonization of thought, a phenomenon that persists as coloniality. Why subvert a food system?

“The reasons for this are many. The colonizers needed to displace labour invested for local needs while expanding and consolidating labour to meet the needs of the colonizers.

“By emphasizing a cash economy, farmers were forced to neglect their own needs, derided as subsistence farmers, and were made to offer their labour in exchange for wages. The colonial powers scored double on this count by introducing plantation agriculture and bringing in the locals as farm hands.”

Bassey stated that the introduction of plantation agriculture, was a core practice of colonialism, which involved massive deforestation and land grabbing promoted monoculture.