Forced cotton cultivation in Upper Volta collapsed food production and then itself
Evidence
Koudougou was the most densely populated circle of the colony, with an estimated 350,ooo peo- ple. Between I925 and 1928, cotton production increased from 214 tons to 7 1 o tons. According to official reports, this increase resulted from adminis- trative pressure. During the same period, millet harvest decreased from I I2,ooo to Ios,ooo tons. In I929 and I930, however, production fell dra- matically to 44,250 tons and 40,000 tons. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1398
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Shows the causal chain of the reader’s core question: forced republican-era development directly undermined food security.
Related
- Compulsory cotton cultivation collapsed once administrative pressure eased (similarity 0.91)
- Forced cotton cultivation tripled output while millet and later cotton collapsed (similarity 0.90)
- Forced labor drained Upper Volta of thousands of workers annually (similarity 0.84)
- France created Upper Volta colony mainly to exploit Mossi labor (similarity 0.83)
- Forced collective cotton cultivation in Upper Volta displaced Africans’ own food crops (similarity 0.83)
- French recruiters drained tens of thousands of Upper Volta workers for forced labor (similarity 0.82)
- Forced labor drained a fifth of Upper Volta’s able-bodied men yearly (similarity 0.81)
- Labor coercion concentrated in Ivory Coast, Western Sudan, and Upper Volta. (similarity 0.81)
- Forced labor concentrated in colonies with labor shortages or surpluses (similarity 0.80)
- Africans in Upper Volta were forced to grow cotton under armed guard (similarity 0.80)
- Forced cotton cultivation left West African farmers starving and unpaid (similarity 0.79)
- Forced labor continued on roads and grew with cotton cultivation in the 1920s (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- French recruiters drained tens of thousands of Upper Volta workers for forced labor
#expands(0.75) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1412 - Colonial cotton schemes failed because Africans refused to grow export crops
#corroborates(0.70) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1387