Impact of farming on African landscapes

Abstract

As the continent with the deepest record of human history, the relationship between landscape formation and human subsistence practices is inseparable. The activities that constitute ‘farming’ are open for some matter of discussion, but essentially speak to the co-evolution of human, plant and animal reproductive systems along a continuum of interdependence. This process is ever evolving, but has resulted in the formation of landscapes in which anthropogenic processes characterize ecosystem functionality in nearly all biomes on the continent. Practices of cultivation, broadly conceptualized, across Africa are varied in the ways in which they have transformed ecological systems and landscapes. The use of fire as a landscape management tool dates to the Pleistocene, and penning of wild sheep to the early Holocene. The alteration of the landscape of fear by these types of human activities had fundamentally restructured trophic systems in Africa prior to the introduction of agriculture. However, the introduction of animal herding and intensive forms of plant cultivation by the middle Holocene correlated to even more significant ecological changes. The creation of agricultural landscapes has had a negative impact on biodiversity in some locations, whereas other some practices at different points in time have positively affected biodiversity. It is now recognized that humans have long influenced the evolution of landscapes wherever they live, but the current research focuses on where, when and how socio-ecological processes become coupled in the palaeoecological record.

Palaeoenvironmental data indicate late quaternary anthropogenic impacts on vegetation and landscapes in Mzimba, northern Malawi

“…These long legacies of human innovation, migration, and information sharing have resulted in a variety of landscape management systems that can be examined in a range of environmental settings. Today, this is evidenced by the myriad subsistence practices that are documented across the continent (Garrity et al, 2012), but the roots of these systems extend deep into prehistory and have significantly impacted the formation of present-day ecological systems (Stephens, 2019;Ellis, 2021;Wright, 2022).…”