Quintanilha was not shy when bragging about the accomplishments of his research center. Nine scientists aided by sixteen assistants plus the personnel of seven local experiment stations (16 technicians) and an unregistered number of “native auxiliaries,” were responsible for no less than doubling the Mozambique’s cotton output in twenty years of operation of the center, from 20,000 tons in 1940 to 40,000 tons in 1960. Significantly, this was accomplished while reducing the areas of land under cotton cultivation and the numbers of indigenous labor involved in the scheme (about half a million by the early 1960s). This was a dramatic increase in productivity, although still not covering Portugal’s needs, with the textile industry of the country booming in the early 1960s due to exports to northern Europe amounting to about 65,000 tons per year, versus 17,000 tons a year in the 1930s. According to Quintanilha, the explanation for the productivity boom was clear: better locations, better cultivation techniques, better plants. All improvements he directly related to CICA’s research.[118]
As it is usually the case in such schemes, its success was also the first cause for problems.[119] To protect cotton from having to compete with other crops for moisture, sunlight and soil, the Cotton Board officials imposed in the first years a monocrop system in contrast to traditional practices of growing different crops in the same plot of land, mixing maize, sorghum, beans or peas.[120] Concessions’ foremen only had to take a quick look at the field to realize if natives were complying or not to their obligation of growing cotton. The dismissal of the allegedly chaotic model of intermixing crops in favor of monocrop fields of cotton caused all sorts of environmental problems, including soil erosion and the spread of new pests such as red bollworm. As early as 1947, a report to the president of the Board of Export of Colonial Cotton supported the increasing evidence linking plant diseases and pests associated with the monoculture of cotton to the decline in food crops.[121] Such decline was also associated to the short periods of time natives were allowed to dedicate to their own households, occupied as they were with demanding cotton fields. More than that, the need for visual surveillance by foremen required the demarcation of cotton fields along the few roads crossing northern Mozambique, most of the times a long-way from natives villages. Soon, the diet basis of the local population was based on manioc, a less demanding crop but also a less nutritive one. Famines stared to show up in the cotton regions and in 1951 in the Mogovolas about 2,000 to 3,000 people died of starvation.[122]
Local catholic priests denounced the tragic events, and the very same General Governor of Mozambique asserted as well that the obsession with cotton production, separating it from the general issue of food security, was responsible for the spread out of famines in the northern regions.[123] It is no surprise than to find out that already in 1947 the Cotton Board, under the advice of CICA experts began promoting the construction of a network of planned cotton communities throughout the north of Mozambique, the “cotton concentrations,” multi-crop agriculture units organized around scientific principles of rotation and crop management and located on the best available land.[124] For indigenous people the main advantage of belonging to such communities was the opportunity to cultivate other crops along with cotton. In the carefully planned cotton concentrations, land rotation, access to better seeds and lands, and the opportunity to grow other crops were intended to overcome all previous problems. Each household received a plot with an area between five and seven hectares, half of which would be allowed to lie fallow at any time. On the remainder, peasants would cultivate a hectare of cotton, a hectare of corn or sorghum, and a hectare of manioc. The concentrations contemplated also an integral social structure with a primary school, a sanitary post, a fountain, and houses for the professor, nurse and overseer of the concession holder.[125]
By the end of the 1950s, more than 30,000 families had been relocated into the cotton concentrations. The majority of cotton planters didn’t adhere. Women, in particular, were resistant to a new scheme that would leave the transmission of property in the hands of men, as imposed by the colonial social model.[126] And soil quality was now the overarching factor determining the location of concentrations. Soil scientists didn’t make much of complaints associated with abandoning the protection of ancestor spirits, guardians of fertility. Also contributing to the unwillingness of natives to resettle was the fact that the translation of the experimental station model into the fields demanded harder and longer work than before. The very same overseers recognized that “within the concentrations we had more or less perfect control over the work of each peasant every day. We could never have exercised such power when their cotton fields were dispersed.”[127]
It may be argued that 30,000 families were a small proportion of the total number of cotton planters in Mozambique, roughly 30 percent of the total number. But the fact is that even for that majority of natives that didn’t live under the scientific rule of the cotton concentrations CICA scientists were a constant presence: distribution of selected and disinfested seeds produced at the experimental stations; decision about the areas for growing cotton, taking into consideration soil and climate conditions, the best strains for each region, how to prepare soil and defend it against erosion and loss of fertility, when and how to seed, when and how to weed, and when and how to pick. The connection between the recommendations made in the colony’s capital (Lourenço Marques) and the field was enforced by four delegations, 22 sectors, and 195 local agencies. By the mid 1960s, shortly after the coercive labor system was abolished, 2,700 officials of the Cotton Institute, the new name of the Board, were responsible for managing around half a million cotton growers planting about 350,000 hectares with cotton.[128]
A case in point of the tight connections between laboratory work and changing cotton fields is again the breeding effort of CICA researchers. In the 1940s the requisite of selecting strains resistant to Jassid attacks was considered a necessary condition to the very same future of cotton in sub-Saharan Africa. Twenty years later, breeders’ aims would change radically. In the 1960s, plants resistant to Jassid were perceived as a hindrance to achieve higher productivity. Jassid resistance is associated mainly to pubescent leaves that hinder insect action. However, for cotton to be picked up mechanically it is necessary to employ a chemical defoliant, so that leafs won’t be picked together with the cotton fiber. The problem is pubescent leafs of Jassid-resistant plants, such as the U4 variety, stick to the cotton fiber after the application of a defoliant, reducing drastically its value. Highly productive operations demanded smooth leafs, doing away with Jassid-resistant strains by employing huge amounts of DDT and other expensive pesticides. Jassid resistance is thus a property tightly connected with manual workers, cultivating in their small plots low productivity strains, demanding much less capital. In the beginning of the 1970s the new strains that the research Center was proud to announce presented poor resistance to Jassid, but were highly recommended for farmers relying on machines and making use of generous amounts of DDT.[129]
118
Aurélio Quintanilha,
119
For a general discussion of failures of state schemes with some examples from agriculture projects, see James C. Scott,
121
Secret correspondence between Gabriel Teixeira, Governor of Mozambique, and the Minister of Overseas (Ministro do Ultramar) for the year 1951: Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Arquivo Salazar (U/7-a).
122
The authorities recognized the problem but acknowledged the death of only 200 Mozambicans. See Fortuna,
123
Secret correspondence between Gabriel Teixeira, Governor of Mozambique, and the Minister of Overseas (Ministro do Ultramar) for the year 1951: ANTT, Arquivo Salazar (U/7-a).
124
J. Fonseca George, “Concentrações Algodoeiras,” in
126
M. Anne Pitcher, “Conflict and cooperation: Gendered roles and responsibilities within cotton households in northern Mozambique,”
128
Instituto do Algodão de Moçambique,
129
P. Pereira de Carvalho,