The people of the Central Province are generally less careful in their farming methods; the Benis often planting their grain crops in only partially cleared land. Farther to the north in the same province a better system is noticeable among the Ishans, Ifons, and the people of Agbede. During recent years, owing to the energetic efforts of the Forestry Department, the cultivation and better treatment of the indigenous rubber tree (Funtumia elastica) have been extensively adopted, especially by the people in the neighbourhood of Benin City, where the climate is well suited to the species. In addition to rubber, cocoa and kola plantations might prove successful in the same localities, but as yet no large plantations of either exist.
In the Eastern Province farming is generally of poor quality until the region of heavy rainfall is left, when extremely large areas are met with, highly cultivated, with the earth thrown up into loose mounds, often five or six feet in height, for the purpose of growing yams, maize, pepper, okra, Guinea corn, pumpkins, etc., all of which are found planted upon each mound; the yams being carefully trained to climb along fibre strings towards central poles.
Principal Crops.—The chief crops grown in the Western Province are maize, cotton, cassava, yams, sweet potatoes, groundnuts, and to a small extent Guinea corn, sugar-cane, tobacco, Colocasia yams, peppers, okra, rice, eggplant, and native beans.
Indigo is extracted from Lonchocarpus cyanescens, which occurs in a wild state, and is preserved when making clearances for farms. The Indigofera spp. are used to a smaller degree for the same purpose. (See Sierra Leone Section, p. 39; also Bulletin of the Imperial Institute, 1909, p. 319; 1918, p. 11; and 1919, p. 31.)
Fruits are not grown plentifully, and are generally left in an uncultivated condition. The chief kinds are pineapples, bananas, pawpaws, akee apple (Blighia sapida), oranges, and guavas. There are several fruits and spices which are collected from the forest strips, but, taken generally, the Western Province people are not great fruit eaters. On the sea coast and for a considerable distance inland, coconut plantations are common, and, near Badagry, copra is prepared from them for shipment.
The crops cultivated in the Central Province are similar to those of the Western, but yams become more, and groundnuts less prominent. Large quantities of palm oil are prepared, and rubber is collected, the labour available for farm work being thereby reduced.
The most important product of the Eastern Province is undoubtedly palm oil, but fairly large quantities of yams and maize are grown outside the forest zone and are transported by native canoes to the coast ports, in the vicinity of which there is very little cultivation.
With the exception of the oil palm, which is of general occurrence throughout the country, the Lagos silk rubber tree (Funtumia elastica) is of the most importance from a commercial standpoint. Rubber vines of the genera Landolphia and Carpodinus are also valuable wild plants, from which some of the finest rubbers are at present extracted. Copal, known as “Ogea” gum, and collected from a tree which has been determined as Cyanothyrsus oblongus (syn. ogea), is exported in varying quantity according to the market value. A fairly extensive local trade is done in “chew-sticks” in the Western Province; the sticks being cut from a tree which occurs in the grass country, and is recognised as Anogeissus leiocarpus. The ash made from the wood of the same tree is sold for use as a mordant in indigo dyeing. Camwood is a red dye-wood prepared from at least three different species of trees—Baphia nitida, Pterocarpus tinctorius, and Pterocarpus sp.—and is almost entirely used locally for staining the human skin or dyeing leather. Fibre plants do not appear to be cultivated in any part of the country, but occur to some extent in all the forested parts. Hibiscus guineensis and Dombeya buettneri are usually employed for native ropes, and the bark of Sterculia barteri is said to be prepared for the same purpose.
OIL PALM.—A description of this tree and information in connection with the principal characteristics and mode of propagation have been given in the Sierra Leone portion of this work, and it may merely be remarked that there is no difference in a general way between trees grown in the two localities. With regard to the form of fruit, however, that of Southern Nigeria is separated into several kinds, varying in the relative proportion of pericarp and kernel, and these will be referred to later.
The method of preparing palm oil varies to a large degree in the different localities. The best quality of oil is that produced in the Western Province. The oil, which on the market is classed as “Lagos fine grade,” and obtains the highest price among West African oils, is made from the fresh fruits boiled and pounded in the manner described for the Sierra Leone oil, but the extracted oil is further cleared by straining and boiling until a uniformly clear and limpid product is obtained.