Chapter 880: Agriculture in Angola

Golvestein, Minister of Agriculture of East Africa, mentioned at the 1893 Angola Overall Agriculture Report Conference:

"The agriculture in Angola can be divided into five parts: the northern tropical cash crop production area, the central plateau food crop production area, the southern traditional animal husbandry area, the eastern marine fishery production area, and the western forestry resource production area."

Marine fishery was one of the important pillar industries in Angola during the colonial era. It reached its peak in the 16th century, when the fishing industry in Angola reached its peak of prosperity.

During this period, Angola's fishing industry not only exported a large amount of fish to Portugal, but also supplied fish to other Portuguese colonies. Angola became one of the most important fishing areas in the Portuguese colonial empire.

Of course, later, with the discovery of gold and silver mines in South America, Portugal shifted its development focus, and Angola's marine fishery entered a period of decline along with Angola's agriculture. It was not until Portugal completely withdrew from Brazil that Angola and Mozambique regained attention.

But it was too late, because the rise of East Africa in the east made Portugal's reinvestment basically go down the drain. Of course, Portugal had already embarked on a path of decline at this time, and its investment in the two places was far from comparable to the period of national strength in the 16th century.

As for forestry resources, Angola's forest area ranked second in Africa in the past, second only to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"During the Portuguese colonization, Angola mainly planted corn, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, peanuts and cotton, as well as some European crops such as grapes, olives and spices (spices were mainly introduced by the Dutch in the 17th century). They also introduced animal husbandry, raising livestock such as cattle, sheep and horses to provide meat and other animal products. In addition, the Portuguese also reclaimed a large amount of land for the cultivation of commodity crops such as coffee and palm trees for export."

Like Zimbabwe, Angola has extremely favorable agricultural conditions. The former is called "the granary of southern Africa" ​​and the latter is "the bread basket of Africa."

Of course, this is the "honor" that the two countries obtained under the Portuguese and British colonial eras respectively. As for the fact that the agricultural structure of the two countries collapsed rapidly after independence, and they changed from food exporters to countries that could not be self-sufficient in agriculture, it is actually completely reasonable.

To put it bluntly, the local indigenous people simply do not know how to farm, or more accurately, do not know how to manage.

After all, they definitely know how to farm. Under the spur of the colonists for hundreds of years, and most of the labor force in plantations and farms are black slaves, if you say that the locals do not know how to farm, it is completely self-deception, because black slaves do not know how to farm, and the plantations and farms of white colonists cannot be operated at all.

However, knowing how to farm does not solve the problem, especially the large-scale agricultural socialization in colonial areas, all the key details are in the hands of white people, including seeds, fertilizers, technology, sales channels, management of plantations and farms, etc., none of which can be mastered by local indigenous people.

Apart from other things, when the white people withdrew from the area, the market that was originally sold to the whole world was artificially interrupted, which was an unsolvable problem for local black people.

Moreover, these agricultural operations are based on large plantations and farms. A plantation or farm can easily have hundreds or even tens of thousands of people. Even the upper class of African indigenous people only have the ability to govern a tribe, and they may not be able to govern well. They also lack the corresponding knowledge and technology. Therefore, the colonists built "barriers" from the beginning to prevent the local indigenous people from turning over.

Of course, East Africa will definitely not "sympathize" with these indigenous people, but will intensify it, because East Africa is a more determined exploiter.

Goerweistan continued: "At present, various plantations and farms in Angola, and fisheries have basically resumed production. At the same time, we have newly established pasture and forest management agencies. According to the Ministry of Agriculture's forecast, in the next 20 years, the total agricultural output value of Angola will become one of the new agricultural growth points in East Africa. Like new territories such as Mozambique and Orange, the local abundant agricultural resources will be fully developed and become a new engine for East African agriculture."

The agriculture that East Africa took over from Portugal and the Boers is a complete agricultural system, which is fundamentally different from the land that East Africa had previously plundered.

Therefore, the East African government's preliminary work does not need to make major changes to the local area. The most typical example is Orange. From the perspective of latitude, terrain, vegetation, precipitation, population and other comprehensive factors, the most suitable local development is animal husbandry.

The situation in Angola is the most complicated. From tropical rainforests to tropical grasslands, and then to tropical deserts, Angola has the richest agricultural development conditions in East Africa. In addition, the Benguela cold current has spawned the world's top five natural fishing grounds, and fishery resources are also very unique.

"In 1892, Angola's agriculture had returned to its pre-war level. By 1893, Angola's agricultural scale had increased by 56%, among which the growth rate of marine fishery resource development ranked first in the country, only lower than the Oriental Province and the Central Province."

Speaking of marine fishery development, it has always been one of East Africa's shortcomings. As a maritime power, East Africa's marine fishery resource development rate has always been low, which can be fully reflected in East Africa's shipbuilding industry.

Among the new marine vessels added in East Africa in the past three decades, fishing vessels accounted for less than 20%, while inland fishing vessels accounted for 59.56%.

The main contributions of East African maritime ships are merchant ships and warships. Although the number of warships is small, their tonnage is large, and the great development of transport ships provides conditions for East Africa's industrial and agricultural exports.

East Africa's primitive accumulation started from the development of agriculture and mineral resources, especially tropical cash crops, gemstones, and rare metals. In recent years, as the scale of East Africa's industry has increased rapidly, the export of industrial products has also developed rapidly.

Due to various reasons, East Africa has seriously insufficient investment in the development of marine resources, so that Angola's marine fishery resources can directly rank third in the country.

You must know that the current marine fishing industry in Angola under East African rule is actually a complete inheritance of the marine fishing industry from the Portuguese rule. Angola was only a colony of the Portuguese before, which means that the marine fishing industry in a colony could have been the same before. Compared with the whole of East Africa, this is amazing.

The surprising thing is not that Angola’s marine fishing industry is developed, but that East Africa’s marine fishing industry is too backward.

However, this backwardness is not caused by technology or other reasons, but by the economic development structure of East African countries. East Africa has been promoting the development of the three major industries of agriculture, mining, and industry, and the direction has always been from the eastern coast to the inland areas. Naturally, It is easy to ignore the utilization and development of marine resources.

Moreover, as a country with a large livestock industry and with many world-class lakes and many world-class rivers, East Africa has very developed inland fishery resources, so East Africa itself has rich sources of meat, and compared to other countries, East Africa has fewer excellent ports and other comprehensive reasons. , East Africa currently has little interest in promoting marine fishing industries.

Of course, this situation is bound to improve with the merger of Angola and Southwest Africa into East Africa, especially Southwest Africa, which is extremely dependent on marine fishing. The local tropical desert climate is dominated by the tropical desert climate, which is not suitable for the development of other types of agriculture.

The port area in southern Angola is also in a similar situation to Southwest Africa. The coast is dominated by a tropical desert climate and there are many excellent ports. In addition to some military needs, it is suitable for development into a large fishing port.