Abstract
Geographical imaginations of the state-owned agricultural landscape mediated by state-sanctioned neoliberal visual discourse obscures the actual realities of these state-spaces. In this paper, I argue that maps that emerge from everyday practices of subaltern groups not only unveil actual realities of state-spaces but also embed possibilities of these landscapes. Farm-settlers on alienated government farmlands of Oyo State of Nigeria use a participatory sketch mapping to reveal spatialities that contest the authoritative cartographies of the farm settlement scheme. Regardless of the authoritative visualisations of state imaginaries, subaltern mappings are an integral part of the everyday geographies of the state-owned agricultural landscape. In conclusion, social mapping of the economic landscape served not only to counter disinformation but also as visual reminders for improvement evident in the farmers’ imagined futures.
An administrative officer, Mr D.P. Stanfield drew the map in Figure 1 in 1945. This was a graphic representation of the Oyo-Iseyin landscape in the Oyo Province of Western Nigeria. A sketch map of the landscape, it relied on a state map for its graphic framework. He used the North B-31 and North C-31 sheets of the Geographical Section of the General Staff (GSGS) as a base map. However, additional spatial knowledge existed on the depicted landscape. For instance, there was a line across the middle of the map revealing a footpath travelled on by the district officer. As he wrote, ‘I visited the site of the proposed dam on the 13th June 1945’. 1 The map resulted from a geographic exploration of the landscape and had the additional purpose of illustrating a proposal sent to the senior administrative officer, the Resident of Oyo Province.
Sketch map of D.P. Stanfield, June 1945 (Source: National Archives, Ibadan, 2020).
The sketch map highlighted the merger of the graphic symbolisation with the itinerary, which documented an act of socio-economic imagination. The map did not have a specific title but it informed the reader that it was ‘sketched from Africa sheet’. As a sketch, it was not interested in scalar representation. While there was no need for a legend, it included an orientation indicated by a north arrow on the left-hand side. The graphic composition of the landscape comprises lines and lettering. The lines portrayed roads and the Ogun River. Again, some lines pictured the topographic landscape northeast of the map, indicating the ‘site of Weir’. A polygonal mark represented a town identified as Iseyin. The graphic symbols manifested landscape identities through the map lettering that indicated place names of the represented natural and cultural features.
These geographical features depicted in Figure 1 also connote an imagined future in the offing. The district officer suggested the creation of a dam on the weir to commence an irrigation project. The focus of this economic proposal was the establishment of a farm settlement for ex-servicemen expected back in the country by January 1946. He suggested a pioneer company of ex-servicemen to construct the road that ‘will probably follow the route marked on the sketch map, which is an existing track’. 2 Despite the bare representation of the landscape, the sketch map served to explain the interlinkages of local geography by the administrative officer to convince superior officials in Ibadan and Lagos of the soundness of his proposal. This social map embedded in the economic imaginary continuously generated memoranda in the late 1940s colonial bureaucracy. Although, there was later a selection of an alternative site along the river, this imagined future of the Oyo agricultural landscape became the origin of the Upper Ogun Agricultural Estate in 1950, which continues to engage economic concern of the citizenry and contemporary state administrations in Oyo State of Nigeria.
Introduction
This paper explores the subaltern production of alternative visual spatialities of state agricultural landscapes in Oyo State of Nigeria that contest the singular political-economic narrative of state cartography. I argue that farm settlers do not only comprehend the actual realities of place but also have imagined futures of state-spaces. State cartography usually presents the authoritative spatial information of the economic landscape. In a modern agricultural economy, land use maps are taken-for-granted tools for planning, monitoring, wayfinding and decision-making. On one hand, there is a general inaccessibility to large-scale land-use maps of state-spaces in Nigeria. On the other hand, there is an emergence of state-sanctioned visualisations including small-scale maps, infographics and stylised advertisements involved in the active construction of consent to a neoliberal agricultural imaginary. This is most evident during electoral politics.
These state-sanctioned visualisations seek a spatial structuring of the geographical imagination of the citizenry 3 regarding state agricultural institutions, for instance, the state-owned farm settlement scheme. A byproduct of these recent state-sanctioned visualisations has been disinformation. The inaccessibility of detailed maps of the state agricultural landscape in Oyo State of Nigeria obscures the geographical realities citizens associate with the state-owned farm settlement schemes. Hence, if cartographic maps are unobtainable, it raises concern about how farmers in state settlement schemes geographically think about the actual realities of state-spaces.
Although ethnographic research studies have employed sketch mapping to explore farmers’ identities, few studies have engaged the place-based knowledge of subalterns in state-owned settlement schemes using sketch mapping as a research tool. In this study, I draw attention to alternative representations in farmers’ spatial productions. Hence, in alienated government lands, what do participatory maps unveil about farmers’ spatiality? The discussion in the article is as follows; the next section examines the conceptual background of cartography, everyday geography and imagination. The third section discusses the state-owned agricultural landscape highlighting the state’s imaginary. The following section presents the methodology used in this paper. I explore the result of the fieldwork in the fifth section. The sixth section discusses the findings of the study and the last section presents concluding remarks.
Conceptual approach
Cartography is concerned with the visual representation of space. Following Biggs, 4 cartography is defined as ‘a set of techniques for producing spatial knowledge and also a form – the map – for representing that knowledge’. Kitchin and Dodge 5 argue that maps are ‘of-the-moment, brought into being through practices’. This cartographic thought of maps and mapping emphasises a processual approach. As Perkins contends that ‘mapping is a process reflecting a way of thinking’. 6 Hence, Crampton 7 drew attention to the active element of sociocultural cartography that attempts to rework the impact of official geo-cartographic knowledges ‘by showing their historical and spatial contingency’.
State cartography is integral to the territorial formation of the modern political state, particularly post-colonial states in sub-Saharan Africa. State maps are crucial in the functions of the modern state, as they provide authoritative knowledge of state-spaces. Authoritative knowledge refers to visualised geographical knowledge produced and organised by or for the modern political state through experts dictated within a top-down scheme. State-space as used here denotes alienated government lands where the state can reconfigure farmlands and farmers as targets of modern development. 8 In recent times, state maps together with other visualisation tools actively construct knowledge of state economic visions. However, there have been criticisms of the power of maps deployed in the service of the modern state. Harley argues that scientific maps, which form the basis of state cartography, are ideological weapons, working for the governing elites; always reflecting partial truth, consequently excluding other knowledges. 9 Similarly, Peluso emphasises state cartographic work aims at ‘homogenisation of space’, a political act in the exploitation of natural resources. In contrast, social maps highlight the views of ordinary people. 10
Social cartography refers to the creation of maps addressing specific questions of importance to the individual or groups at a given time and place. 11 For example, Figure 1 represented the geographical knowledge of the Oyo-Iseyin landscape in 1945 by a low-ranking administrative officer. Participatory social cartographies are a democratised form of active engagement in geographical knowledge production. Wood argues that anyone can appropriate the power of cartographic knowledge. 12 Participatory maps are employed in varieties of ways to support the spatial expression of subaltern groups. 13 The subaltern as used here refers to the farm settlers and low-ranking state officials as marginalised in the spatial administration of state-spaces. Unlike the top-class state bureaucrats with access to large-scale scientific maps and authoritative land-use plans of state-spaces, the everyday spatial knowledge of the subordinate groups is considered more inferior.
I understand counter maps as a form of participatory social mappings deployed by subordinate classes to resist or protest the homogenisation of state-space. As Harris and Hazen explain, counter-mapping are ‘efforts to contest or undermine power relations and asymmetries in relation to cartographic products or processes’. 14 I argue that there is a link between everyday practices and visual reminders of the micro-politics of resistance expressed in subaltern cartographies. The notion of everyday refers to the ordinary, routine tasks that meet the biological and social needs of humans, where micro-politics are usually embedded. 15 Micro-politics refers to the ordinary and subtle expressions and actions, which indirectly approve, alter or resist prevailing social order or regulations. 16
In the everyday practice of the subaltern, there is a recurring self-awareness of needs and desires, which might seem trivial. For instance, there is a daily thought of the need for road infrastructure on a neglected agricultural landscape. 17 Again, the bodily practice of looking, walking, driving and commuting involves a direct experience of space, which invokes a sense of location, distance and direction of the subaltern to other objects. 18 Consequently, there is not only a daily experience of the biophysical environment but also the everyday spatial rootedness of the recurring needs and desires. These everyday practices of the subaltern comprise the geographical imaginations of the landscape, as they experience and think about it. Daniels observes, in a broader form, ‘imagination is a way of encompassing the condition of both the known world and the horizons of possible worlds’. 19
The worlds of lived experiences and possibilities are unceasingly recurring in everyday tales, which can also take another form of practice: visual reminding. Visual reminding refers to the act of visible illustration to retell the lived experiences and desires of the everyday battle for survival, which sometimes slip off memory. By drawing the landscape, the subaltern memorialises the taken-for-granted realities and possibilities that constitute the imaginations of everyday practices. For instance, Figure 1 illustrates the physical geography of the Oyo landscape but also embeds the possibilities of a settlement scheme. This imagination manifests a distinctive individual or group experience, which does not necessarily reproduce the real world. The micro-politics of resistance seeks to portray the agricultural landscape as ordinary people imagined it to be, emphasising neglect or marginalisation while noting horizons of possibilities. 20 As Sletto suggests ‘ participatory map production is intimately implicated in performances of the past, the present and often divergent, imagined futures’. 21
Several scholars have drawn attention to the limitations of participatory counter-mapping. As Hodgson and Schroeder 22 contend, there are conflicting local-broader priorities; the issue of integrating community mapping into the political economy; and the challenge of defining counter-mapping. Again, Hohenthal et al posits that community mapping did not ‘offer ready-made solutions that need political decision making’. 23 Likewise, Anthias cautions that ‘as a tool for challenging or transcending official legal-cartographic knowledges, participatory mapping had proved limited, and had even backfired’. 24 Indeed, Asmolov argues that regardless of ‘claims that maps will increase transparency and accountability’, participants in the mapping process are often ‘not necessarily in the solution of the issues mapped’. 25 These critiques highlight the limitations of the valiant assumptions of the counter maps as a form of pure resistance. 26
Therefore, a key question is that of counter maps viewed beyond the notion of pure resistance. Some scholars have argued that the social map as spaces of resistance ‘is neither cooptation nor resistance, but some mix of the two’.27,28 This is relevant to state-space where collective protest is rare.
29
I argue that social maps as resistance is a form of negotiation inherent to everyday power relations in state-spaces. As a form of negotiation,
30
these maps are low-profile tactics with multi-layered faces doing the work of visual memoranda. As Pile observes, tactics of resistance have at least two ‘surfaces’: one facing towards the map of power, the other facing in another direction, towards intangible, invisible, unconscious desires, pleasures, enjoyments, fears, angers and hopes - the very stuff of politics.
31
Maps from everyday practices are unstable social productions, which highlights them as ‘constellations of ongoing processes’. 32 Within this context, this paper examines the subaltern geographical imaginations of the state-owned agricultural landscape. The cases of everyday social mapping of state-spaces in Oyo State of Nigeria illustrate this phenomenon, where counter maps reveal the actualities of state-space but also unveil possibilities. Unlike the micro-politics of subordinate classes, the official politics of the post-colonial state have always imagined and refashioned the state’s agricultural spatiality through the totalising perspective of cartographic-legal knowledges, for instance, of land tenure regimes.
Authoritative vision and the state agricultural landscape
The modern state has often worked through tenure regimes, agricultural institutions and visualisations to instill an authoritative vision of the agricultural landscape. The land tenure regime in Oyo State has undergone different changes in the provision of land for agriculture. There was customary land tenure in Yorùbáland before the advent of colonial rule. For example, a characteristic of Yorùbá customary tenure was group ownership with the family as the basis of landholding. At the commencement of British colonial rule, there was the introduction of formal law guiding the acquisition of land for agricultural development. There were regulations for land acquisition for public projects. ‘As far as State ownership of land is concerned’, Famoriyo noted ‘from the time of British administration in Nigeria, the State has acquired land through grants, gifts and the principle of compulsory acquisition as made operational under the relevant legislations’. 33
Development experts identified existing land tenure systems after political independence in 1960 as an obstacle to agricultural modernisation. One particular measure to improve access to farmland taken by the old Western Regional Government was the creation of farm settlements across the region. Most of these alienated lands were uninhabited and unused customary lands, placed under state control. In 1978, the introduction of the Land Use Act became an effort towards a new land tenure regime. However, as Mabogunje observed the Land Use Act has ‘[become] a clog in the wheel of development over the years’. 34 For instance, registering farmland is expensive and restrictive provisions like half-hectare rules make the availability of farmland difficult.
The Farm Settlement Scheme emerged in the late colonial period as part of the postwar development project of the colonial government. In 1945, Mr Stanfield first proposed the establishment of a farm settlement ‘in an area some 18 miles [28.8 km] northeast of Iseyin’.
35
There was a rapid expansion of the agricultural settlement scheme by the Western Nigeria Government, with the establishment of the Western Nigeria Land Settlement Scheme (WNLSS) in 1960, which had 37 farm settlements by 1968.
36
However, during the economic stagnation that befell the country between the 1980s and 1990s, alongside technical and managerial problems, the scheme suffered from willful neglect of the authoritarian regimes. Since the 2000s, the state administrations of southwestern Nigeria have sought to revamp the scheme but have recently adopted a neoliberal agricultural policy of Private-Public Development Partnership to achieve this revamping of the scheme.
37
Specifically, the Oyo State Government advertises transforming the farm settlements into farm estates.
38
The farm estate is a large agricultural area where backbone infrastructure such as feeder roads, electricity, water for irrigation and domestic uses, and communication facilities are provided by Government to stimulate sustainable partnerships with private sector investors in conducting agricultural, agri-business and economic activities. The. . ..concept comprises a core venture (private sector), large (private sector), medium, and small-scale farms operating under an outgrower arrangement.
39
State representations of the landscape have often structured the spatial consciousness of agriculture. Maps were essential tools in discussing proposals and management of the farm settlement scheme in the late colonial period (see Figure 2). In the early post-colonial period, maps and large-scale land-use plans were integral to the postwar development program that sought to reconfigure farmers and the farming landscape into ideals of agricultural modernity (see an example in Figure 3). 40 Ever since the regimes of authoritarian administrations, there has been an increase in the secrecy of cartographic representations of state-spaces. Indeed, I was denied access to land-use maps of Lalupon and Ogbomoso farm settlements at the state agricultural ministry. In contrast, there has been a reengaging of state visualisations through small-scale maps and infographics in the active construction of popular consent for the state-sanctioned neoliberal vision as captured in Figure 4. This genre of small-scale maps and infographics has become a popular source of the visual imagining of the state agricultural settlement scheme. However, a byproduct of using these infographics has been the stimulation of disinformation about the actual everyday conditions of the state agricultural landscape.
Sketch map of proposed Iresa Farm Settlement, July 1951 (Source: National Archives, Ibadan, 2020).
Land-use plan of the Ilora Farm Settlement, Town Planning Department, Western Nigeria Government, Ibadan, 1960 (Source: Spiro, 1986).
An infographic of Ajumose Agriculture Program (Source: Oyo State Government, 2017).
Methods
Oyo State is located in Southwest Nigeria (see Figure 5) covering 27, 249 km2. As a research tool for eliciting data, mental sketch mapping is ‘an interactive approach using accessible and free-ranging visual methods in an individual or group interview setting to interrogate qualitative research questions’. 41 The mapping exercise was conducted at Lalupon and Ijaye farm settlements as well as the Local Government Agricultural Office at Iyana-Offa. The target populations of this fieldwork were farmers and farm settlements. The farm settlements and farmers were selected using the purposive sampling method. The basis of the selection of participants in the visual mapping exercise was on ‘the information they can provide’. 42 The mapping exercise was part of larger fieldwork on the visual and discursive imagining of the agricultural landscape. Hence, the criteria for the sketch-mapping component of this fieldwork were the ability to draw and the participants’ interest to visually express the actual realities of the landscape.
Map of Oyo State, Nigeria showing the study sites (Author, 2021; Data, OSM).
There were varied characteristics of the participants involved in the visual mapping exercise. Four farmers partook in the exercise at the Ijaye farm settlement. One farmer each at Lalupon and at Iyana-Offa, who came from Ogbomoso farm settlement, also participated in the exercise. These participants were all males, both young and middle-aged. I requested the participants to draw their perceptions of the existing government farm settlements using the provided sheet of paper, colored maker and pens. There were discussions between participants and the researcher about the maps during and after the mapping exercise. The fieldwork was conducted between November 2020 and February 2021. Analyzing the sketch maps involved examining the graphic symbology, place identity and ideological implications emergent in the mapping process.
Results
Ijaye farm settlement
The everyday mobility practices of farmers’ revealed place-based knowledge of state-spaces but also drew attention to resentment concerning the road network around the authoritative landscape. The itineraries of Ijaye farm settlers influenced their visual representation of the actuality of place, embedded in a wider rural space. This was evident in the mental map of the farm settlers at the Ijaye Farm Settlement constructed using only linear symbols (see Figure 6). The dominant linear symbol on the map of Ijaye farm settlement was a single stretch of line flanked to the right by two branching lines and at the end by curved lines with short extended branch lines. Interestingly, different persons were involved in the drawing and lettering of the map at the Ijaye farm settlement. The farmer who drew the map seems unsure of his literacy such that another farmer did the lettering as they all deliberated on place names to include. These place names identified the linear symbology, which represented the road network.
Sketch map of farm-settlers at Ijaye Farm Settlement, 2020. Photo by Babatunde Ogundiwin.
The mobile practices of everyday farm work influenced place identities on the mapped landscape. Many farmers commute to the farm settlement on motor bikes. For example, most bike transport on the road commenced at the highway junction, where there is a signpost of Ijaye Farm Settlement (see Figure 7). The prime feature of the rural landscape was the road network consisting of major and feeder roads. The major roads include the Iseyin-Ijaye highway and the road that linked it with the farm settlement. Several feeder roads linked this main road to the Ijaye farm settlement. There are varied degrees of movement of people on the road network. Nonetheless, walking was the primary means of mobility within the farm settlement and in the nearby villages of Atan and Oke-Alaapadi.
Ijaye farm settlement signpost, Iyana-Atan. Photo by Babatunde Ogundiwin.
The revealed landscape stressed the spatial cognition of farmers learned during their everyday journeys across the farm settlement. For instance, the Ijaye farmers could not explicitly mark the farm blocks, but it was reflected in their oral explanations. ‘All along the camp road are farm blocks’, said a farmer. However, the only farm block labelled on the map was AB. The farm settlers explained that ‘these farm settlements, here and here (pointing along the road on the map) are AA, AO and so on’. When I requested the mapmaker, a semi-literate farmer, to mark some farm holdings on an additional sketch map, another farm settler, middle-aged and more illiterate, joined the discussion. He said the ‘holdings are 12 hectares (25 acres) each’, implying how could these large spaces be expressed visually. Then he thoughtfully drew an unsolicited, ephemeral map on the ground to drive home his argument.
The middle-aged farmer, using the ephemeral map, insisted that ‘the farm holdings are too large or numerous for anyone to sketch on paper’. Hence, the middle-aged illiterate farmer said that only the state surveyor could know the constituent holdings in each block. Nonetheless, another farmer informed me that there were 707 holdings on the 5,780-hectares Farm Settlement, showing the disparity of spatial knowledge among farmers. The everyday geography of Ijaye Farm Settlement was evident in the depicted farm blocks and holdings. The farm settlement layout constitutes several farm blocks along the ‘camp road’, the road labelled AB [farm settlement], and the roads towards the south of the landscape.
The adjoining southern roads had much significance to the farm settlers in their wayfinding skills. The farmer-mapmaker and the middle-aged farmer remarked that ‘this road (pointing to the stretch of the road labelled Aba Gedu) leads to Eruwa’ and pointing again at the road labelled Kunbi and Gbogala, ‘it leads to Iseyin, but you have to pass through narrow jungle path at some places’. They led to other state agricultural institutions. Near the Ijaye Farm Settlement are the State Tree Crops Development Unit, founded in 1973, the Ijaye Forest Reserve created in the colonial period, and the Government Oil Palm Plantation, established after 1999. Hence, the farmers do not associate the kind of distinct identity for the farm settlement as in Lalupon or Ogbomoso Farm Settlements. Although less acquainted with the Eruwa and Iseyin-Ipapo Farm Settlements, these farmers also reveal similar solidarity to farmers in these older farm settlements concerning collective action about road infrastructure.
Everyday mobile activities highlighted the anxieties held in the geography of social relations of these farmers. The itineraries within the farm settlement emphasised the road network as the focus of their counter-imagination to the state-sanctioned neoliberal visual discourse. Indeed, the depicted road network of the Ijaye farm settlement connotes a field of power relations. The daily routine of biking and walking within this landscape was a prompter for discussing politics by farmers, thereby ‘offer[ing] opportunities for resistance in everyday life’.
43
‘Our leaders’ only care for the township roads, not the rural roads’, said a motor bike driver. He was conversing with the farmer-mapmaker, who was preparing to leave the farm settlement for Ijaye town, after completing the mental map. Below I provide an excerpt of discussions between three farmers: The middle-aged farmer: “That [link] road remains our primary challenge”. Farmer-mapmaker: “Except for jeeps [used by state government officials] and trucks [carrying timber from the forest reserve], we all depend on motor bikes [to reach the farm settlement]. These roads [from the highway junction] are bad”. Another farmer, laughing while contrasting with the farm settlers, emphasizing their common annoyance with physical aches and dusty faces: ‘Villagers are already used to walking [these long distances]’.
The construction of the link road in Figure 6 was a particular challenge narrated by the farmers, highlighting a general problem of road accessibility. This dusty earth road from the farm settlement to Atan village was ‘constructed’ through the collective effort of farm settlers and Atan villagers (see Figure 8). The middle-aged farm settler, sitting beside the farmer-mapmaker said: the road from the farm settlement to Atan was constructed by us [farm settlers’ association]. We contributed ₦400,000 of the ₦700, 000 needed for the bulldozer operators to make the road. The road was constructed in 2017. We had to beg the bulldozer operators with that amount [₦700,000] before they could commence the widening of the former path [to become a road]. The rest of the money was. . .. contributed by Atan villagers.
The road remains a fundamental issue in the interaction between the farm settlers and the state government. For instance, the middle-aged farmer added that ‘we were assisted in the road construction by a [federal] senator from Alabata’. Alabata is a large village seven kilometers south of Ijaye-Orile. Thus, financial assistance from the federal legislator assisted in the construction of the rural road. This road network around the farm settlement and its surrounding villages loom large in the geographical knowledge of the farm-settlers. Indeed, it framed their geographic imagination of lived reality. Consequently, there was anxiety regarding its maintenance. There was the concern that successive rainy seasons will lead to the gradual washing away of the earth’s road. Hence, their anxiety underlines a counter-narrative to the neoliberal claim-making of a splendid state agricultural landscape. The concern of this collective geography was revealing the reality of place anticipating a permanent solution to the road challenge.
The link road between the farm settlement and the highway. Photo by Babatunde Ogundiwin.
Lalupon farm settlement
Everyday farm work highlighted place-based knowledge of the state-space while emphasising an imagined future. The daily farm work of fish farming and poultry production along the stream and roads at Lalupon Farm Settlement contributed to the visual reproduction of the lived reality of the landscape. The middle-aged farmer skillfully employed graphic symbols to express his perception of space. He used a vertical perspective to frame the spatial extent of the landscape. The township road cuts across the middle of the landscape (Figure 9), from the east to the west and the village road (Figure 10) intersects at the center of the township road, dividing the north from the south. He labelled the observable stream to the west and the layout road, within the settlement, to the east. The almost straight-line geometry of the sketch map, compared to the actual material space, was noticeable. Thus, irregular geographical features ‘are remembered as more regular; for example, streets and rivers as straighter or more parallel or perpendicular than they actually are’. 44
Sketch map of farmer from Lalupon Farm Settlement, 2020. Photo by Babatunde Ogundiwin.
Road linking Lalupon town and Edun village passing through Lalupon Farm Settlement. Photo by Babatunde Ogundiwin.
The place identities on the landscape are reflected through the everyday mobile practices of the farmer. In this 12.4-hectares Farm Settlement, commuting was the means of accessing the farm settlement and walking was integral to routine farm tasks. Most farmers in the farm settlement reside outside the farm, so they commute to and from the farm settlement in the mornings and evenings. In contrast, the daily routine of farming involved habitual short-distance walks associated with several place identities within the farm settlement. Hence, the features positioned along the roads and within the farm blocks revealed the participant’s intimate knowledge of the farm’s layout. Examples include the roads, fishponds, poultry pens and the farm office on the landscape.
Place knowledge acquired by this farmer during walking around the stream, the poultry pens and the assembly hall drew attention to this landscape. The stream at the edge of the farm blocks is the site of fishponds, as illustrated in Figure 9, operated by some farm settlers. These fishponds reflected spatial relationship with the natural space, evident in their positioning within and next to the stream. ‘I am involved mainly in fish farming but also have a land allotment’, the farmer said. There are several poultry pens scattered about in the upper farm block but concentrated within the lower farm block. Visits to the assembly hall were almost a daily routine for several poultry and fish farmers located nearby. However, since the participant was devoted to fish farming, walking to the assembly hall beside the farm office was a periodic affair when the Farm Settlement Association (FSA) holds its monthly meeting. Discussions at the FSA meetings are essentially about the challenges of the farm settlement.
A farmer noted that the state government should ‘build the pen and construct their [farm-settlers] residence beside it. . .Everyone should have a pen and house [in their farm holding]’. Despite the cultivation of maize farming in some land holdings to provide pen grains, another farmer observed, ‘the maize grown here is not enough’. He added, ‘yet the government blocks the border [not allowing importation of corn] leading to the high cost of [available] pens grains’. A third farmer, a FSA official emphasised, ‘only the land is provided by the government, no other thing (like funding, electricity, water, etc.) are provided – every other thing is done [provided] by ourselves’. The farmers’ view on physical infrastructure was different from the state narratives in infographics and maps (see Figure 4).
These challenges of the state agricultural landscape are not part of the neoliberal visual narrative. For instance, the farmer’s depiction of nonexistent infrastructural facilities informed the current state of neglect. Unlike the agricultural visualisations in state publications and websites, the farmer, who is a technician, observed, ‘This farm settlement lacks several facilities’, pointing to the neglect of the roads in Figure 9. This neglect was a complete dislocation from the peoples’ imagination of the farm settlement when the Lalupon Community Development (CD) Pilot Farm Project, founded in 1961, transformed into a full-scale farm settlement in 1964. ‘What exists in the way of infrastructure has not been maintained’, he remarked referring to neglected water systems along the layout road. Hence, there was a continuation of associating the farm settlement imagination with socio-physical infrastructure. This reflected the entrenched logic of early post-colonial social welfarism, which the current neoliberal agricultural imaginary seeks to displace. Hence, Figure 9 was a counter-narrative to the neoliberal positioning of the settlement scheme.
Despite the state-programmed activity of farm production, there was an embodiment of subversion on the farmer’s map. In discussing the challenges, this middle-aged participant also envisioned solutions. As he complained about the lack of facilities, he sketched a re-imagined landscape, which reflected his desires, hopes and aspirations. It was an alternative rendering of state-space from its current realities. First, he conceived water supply as borehole facilities dedicated to each farm block. This re-emphasises what the farm settlers had always commented upon: that water supply was very important to poultry farming. Similarly, he envisioned an electric transformer on the landscape to draw attention to the need for an electric supply. Though electric supply lines ran across the farm settlement to nearby villages such as Edun, there was no electric supply to the farm. In addition, he imagined the need for a silo. This visualised storage facility reflected his concern ‘with marketing opportunities for farmers’ produce’. Hence, he was ‘seeking to create new meanings out of imposed meanings, to re-work and divert space to other ends,’ 45 thereby presenting an anticipatory spatiality. 46
While his farm holding allotment was partly used for crop farming, he was interested in cattle rearing. He said, ‘My purpose for securing this holding was not poultry farming, though I have a fishpond [here], I took the allotted farmland to raise cattle in the future’. He directed his critique to the subnational state that was not concerned with his desires in the ‘allotment at the farm settlement for which I pay for every month’. Hence, in his anticipation, the label ‘Livestock’ meant not only poultry-keeping but also cattle rearing. The Lalupon farm settlement focuses on poultry production embedded in its local place name of Sasa Aladie, [Sasa – the poultry breeder]. Hence, this farm settler’s map contested the ‘norm’ – of the government’s age-old policy of running the Lalupon farm settlement solely for poultry production. 47
This desire echoed the cries of several agricultural experts and citizens for cattle ranching as practised at the Upper Ogun Estate in the late 1950s and in farm settlements such as Ilora in the early 1960s. Farmer-herder clashes in the northern part of Oyo State seem to make him more desirous of challenging the programmed farm landscape. Thus, his interest in crop farming was possibly for hay production. Although there was some maize crop farming: banana trees, secondary forests and some pens filled most parts of the upper farm blocks labelled as crop farming. The farmer appropriated the upper farm block for his desired purpose of expansive crop farming, a desire shared by other farmers in their verbal geographies. Therefore, he revealed a personal geography concerned with desired change to the current farming system and physical infrastructure.
Ogbomoso farm settlement
Everyday commuting between long-distance places contributed to place-based knowledge, which prompted a reworking of the authoritative landscape. The rhythms of everyday commuting of the farmer across the Ogbomoso Farm Settlement influenced the graphic representation of the state agricultural landscape (see Figure 11). Like Ijaye and Lalupon farms, the road network was the framework for recalling parts of the geography of the Ogbomoso Farm Settlement.
I take a motor bike every day from Ogbomoso to Ibadan’. [Then he described his movement from the settlement road until reaching the highway]. You can see the whole area [farm settlement] filled with past development and unused lands.
Using considerable drafting skills, the farmer employed varied graphic symbology to organise and visualise space. In Figure 11, a geometric order was evident in the organisation of the represented space. There was the use of linear symbols to construct several roads on the landscape. In addition, there was the construction of bounded spaces using polygonal shapes. For example, he depicted several blocks and plots using rectangles and squares. Again, bounded spaces distinguished social spaces. As indicated, there were demarcated spaces assigned to education, health and religious features. This graphic representation made tangible the shortly fleeting identities on the landscape when commuting.
Sketch map of farmer from Ogbomoso Farm Settlement, 2020. Photo by Babatunde Ogundiwin.
This everyday mobile experience drew attention to the place identities of age-long housing, underutilised, abandoned and unused lands within the landscape. The upper farm block of the depicted landscape exemplified actual reality within the Ogbomoso Farm Settlement. The participant reproduced the spatial arrangement of the farm settlement, particularly the elements of the farm-holding unit - the home plot, the cash crop plot and the farmhouse. This representation of farm settlers’ holdings attempts to replicate the spatial arrangement between Oke-Ola and Oke Alapata, along the feeder road linking the Ogbomoso-Oyo road. However, he observed, ‘the [current] conditions of the layout include derelict buildings and unkempt roads’. While drawing the farm block, he became concerned with the geography of the front and backyard of the farm holdings. This reflected the geometric rationality of modern agriculture when the Ogbomoso farm settlement commenced as the Native Administration Farm School in 1948. He lamented, ‘all the old farm settlements created by the old Western Region are not functioning at the expected capacity’.
The routes he commuted, which linked the settlement roads with the Ogbomoso-Oyo highway, follow along underutilised and unused lands. He emphasised the existence of these lands, representing them as the blank space on the map. A senior state bureaucrat I spoke with at the state secretariat in Ibadan affirmed, ‘Farmers rarely exploit their [land] allocations’. In contrast, the Ogbomoso farmer opined, ‘people are discouraged to fully utilise the land because of poor state support. The dilapidated conditions of the roads discourage many to use their allocations’. The 2,428-hectare Ogbomoso Farm Settlement had been a model of the farm settlement organisation, after the conversion of the farm school to a full-blown farm settlement in 1960, but the current conditions of the farm settlement have undermined this geographic imagination of the state-space.
Unused lands are potential farmlands that remained unallocated or uncultivated. In most cases, secondary deciduous forests with wide cashew and mango trees have taken over these former and potential farmlands. These declining conditions observable at the Ogbomoso farm settlement, as elsewhere, are the justification for the state-sanctioned neoliberal narrative to revamp the state agricultural landscape. A senior state bureaucrat who firmly supported the neoliberal vision of the state government explained: ‘Agriculture is treated in Oyo State as a vocation instead of a business’. Hence, there was a need to remove state control, to ‘eliminate bureaucratic red tape’ 48 and attain a brighter future for agriculture.
In contrast, the farmer considered the fundamental problem of the agricultural settlement scheme as the governing class. More than two weeks before this visual mapping, this second-generation farm settler, as the participant identified himself, was full of complaints against the political class. He alleges that the governing system had relegated agriculture to the background. For instance, he observed that the Chairman of Lagelu Local Government Area (LGA) had responded sometimes ago that there were ‘no funds for agricultural machines’ as ‘there was no money in government coffers’. Lalupon farm settlement is located in Lagelu LGA. In addition, he comments, in terms of equipment in Oyo State, ‘the machinery available for agro-processing or land preparation is not enough’. Indeed, referring to Lagelu LGA, state-owned farm machinery, ‘does not exist’. He lamented that: ‘there is no farm tractor for land preparation, owned by the LG, in the entire LGA. [So] farmers had to go to Ibadan, Oyo or Iwo to secure [rent] tractors from private owners’. Indeed, the political-administrative system had discarded the peasant developmental logic, which remains the participant’s model of choice. Therefore, his reflective knowledge of the map highlighted the everyday politics that yearns for basic agricultural support.
The underutilised and abandoned space of the farm settlement constituted a subaltern challenge: to reexamine the images of effective agriculture in the state narrative about the Ogbomoso farm settlement. His creative visualisation of fictional expectations of infrastructure, indicated on the map, was possibly encouraged by the unutilised lands between Ibapon and Adu, north of Oke-Alapata, on the settlement landscape. 49 The map became a visual medium to highlight an aspirational geography of the landscape, which embodies, perhaps, a daydreaming of the farmer, as he commutes daily across the landscape.
He drew attention to this imagined future in the service block depicted on the landscape as what ought to be. This low-ranking agricultural officer, who also identified as a farm settler, imaginatively accentuated social amenities that needed to serve the geometrically ordered land holdings and farm blocks. In particular, he emphasised the need for electricity. He included a ‘solar energy plant’ in the visualised agricultural landscape as a solution to the interrupting electric supply. One fundamental challenge of Oyo State farm settlements has been the poor electricity supply on the farm settlement. He opined initially about siting individual solar energy facilities within the farm holdings. However, he stated that in the Nigerian context, ‘it will be too expensive’.
Again, he was concerned with the agricultural support services required to make farm work more functional. He emphasised agricultural support services, particularly farm mechanisation on the represented landscape: ‘the first requirement for successful farming is a farm mechanization facility’. Earlier, he stressed that ‘nobody was ready to farm these days using hoe and cutlass’. He observed the problem of mechanical power on most farm settlements, remarking that the ‘underutilization of allotted farm holding’ in the state farm settlements was due to ‘the unavailability of mechanical power’. This was the popular view of agricultural bureaucrats that the present state agricultural rationality cannot have an impact without addressing the infrastructural challenge of abandoned and underutilised farm settlements. The emotional lament of this agricultural officer reflected his subaltern position in the territorial governance of agriculture that has become solely dependent on the actions of the top-down federal and state governmental system. These emotive concerns are reflected in Figure 11 in his re-envisioning of the state agricultural landscape.
Discussion
The participatory maps that emerged from everyday practices reveal the state-space from the subaltern perspective. These social maps emerging from personal knowledge in everyday actions undermine the spatial secrecy of state-spaces, which encourages state narratives that do not match actualities. They are a form of resistance against inaccessible large-scale state maps and land-use plans of the state-space, which shrouds the basic spatial knowledge and the actual reality of the authoritative landscape. The documented alternative spatialities serve as a reminder of the subaltern’s view of reality, a form of visual memoranda for the higher class of the state bureaucratic power. This affirms Pile’s contention, ‘that resistance may well operate between the spaces authorised by authority, rather than simply scratching itself into the deadly spaces of oppression and exploitation’. 50
These subaltern maps emerging from everyday practices contribute to the process of debunking the disinformation embedded as a byproduct of the neoliberal visual discourse. The maps highlight subaltern resistance against disinformation regarding the assumed socio-physical conditions of the state-spaces. The visual exposition of these socio-physical identities provides a step in solving the social-infrastructural problem of these state-spaces. This agrees with Kitchin and Dodge’s argument ‘that understands the unfolding of everyday life as sets of practices that seek to solve ongoing relational problems. 51 Besides, as a visual reminder, the maps contribute to the emerging process of contesting this disinformation in the public space. Therefore, as Kitchin and Dodge observe ‘maps are constantly in a state of becoming; constantly being remade’. 52
These mental maps emphasise rethinking alternative futures of state-space through subaltern imaginaries. Rather than corporate-oriented neoliberal views from the State House or State Secretariat, the subaltern spatialities highlights alternative futures that seeks changes to improve agricultural production through a collective logic of wellbeing. The imagined spatiality stresses the need for physical infrastructure, diversified farming practices and improved land utilisation. By this visual means, subalterns blur the inevitability and hyperreal identity of the neoliberal imaginary of the state visual narrative. Again, the simultaneous visual construction of realities and possibilities emphasises the consciousness of seeking change by subtle negotiation while remaining ‘subversive cartographies’. ‘They are textual practices’, observe Wainwright and Bryan 53 ‘that weave together power and social relations’ in the process to memorialise and create. 54 A visual reminder, these subaltern maps assist the frailty of the human memory in the ongoing politics of agricultural visibility.
Conclusion
There are concerns about the realities of alienated government farmlands refashioned in the state visual discourses as elegant authoritative landscapes, which mediates popular geographies of political electioneering. In this paper, I have argued that maps produced by subalterns, which emerge from everyday practices, do not only reveal the actual conceptualisation of state-spaces but also the imagined futures of these landscapes. I have demonstrated from the everyday mapping of state-spaces in Oyo State of Nigeria the realities and possibilities of the state agricultural landscape, which counters the disinformation inherent in the state-sanctioned neoliberal visual discourse. In these state-spaces, where collective protest or outright resistance is impossible, social maps of subalterns groups serve as a visual reminder of lived realities to the bureaucratic leadership, the governing class and the citizenry while negotiating for improved conditions of the agricultural landscape. This visual contest highlights the role of social maps as an integral part of the everyday representations of state-spaces. Therefore, these alternative geographical imaginations unveiled in the mapping process points to the need to take seriously the spatial perception of subalterns in the dialogue and conversations concerning the future revamping of the settlement schemes.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the editor, Dr Matthew Wilson, all the reviewers for valuable advice and Dr Alex Wafer for discussions on developing this article.
Ethics statement
I secured the Human Research Ethics Committee approval (H19/09/41) of Wits University, Johannesburg to conduct the fieldwork.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Emancipatory Future Studies Project, 2020, Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa.
