The Paradox of Planning: Agriculture, Schooling, and the Unresolvable Uncertainty of Ideal Family Size in Rural Sierra Leone

Abstract

Post-war Sierra Leone has experienced a population explosion that has raised questions among rural farmers about the relationship between family size and poverty. Agricultural decline and the high cost of schooling are not prompting parents to articulate a desire for smaller families; rather, they highlight that the uncertainty around articulating the “right” number of children is unresolvable because the ability to send children to school is predicated on increasing agricultural outputs that decline precisely because population pressure has reduced soil fertility. Bolten and Marcantonio conclude that this renders family size the heart of a paradox, where there is no optimal number of children.

Usurious strangers and “a better tomorrow”: Agricultural loans, education, and the “poverty trap” in rural Sierra Leone

“…(interview, June 10, 2018)Returning to risk, parents must devote a majority of their harvest to keep a child in school, and every parent with whom we spoke had put at least one child in the local primary school, with several local children also migrants at the regional secondary school in Mile 91. As we found (Bolten and Marcantonio 2021), no child who had attended school from these villages after the war had attended tertiary education or found a wage‐paying job, rendering the promise of education an object of fascination and desire even as it cannot fulfill its promises—a fetish. Even as parents acknowledged that much of the “poverty trap” of rice loans was due to their desire to educate their children despite the lack of evidence of others succeeding, they were not dissuaded.…”

“…Rather, fallow periods have decreased markedly since the war, which changes the soil fertility because nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus cannot build up in “weak” bush, and the soil has acidified due to erosion from forest fragmentation and decreased fallow time. In many villages, population pressure means bush is only allowed to lie fallow for three to five years (Bolten and Marcantonio 2021; Food and Agriculture Organization 2021; Kamara et al 2016), instead of the prewar standard of ten to twenty years (Frausin et al 2014; Leach 1994; Richards 1995), which in and of itself reduces yield considerably. Farmers continually put “weak” bush under cultivation partly because there is not enough land to farm and partly because the boliland , the seasonally flooded swamps, can only be farmed effectively if they are plowed with tractors.…”

“…It was “special” because it required minimal processing and was usually a gift item. We noted that older people described their own childhoods as ones of abundant rice, so abundant that it was never measured before it was cooked, whereas now people measure cups of rice in such limited quantities that a household of ten may share as little as six cups of rice per day (Bolten and Marcantonio 2021). The strain on people's bodies from malnutrition means that, according to one man, “if you want to plow the boliland by hand, maybe six men can do a plot for one family in a day, but then they would all go to the hospital” (interview, June 11, 2016).…”

“…White rice began appearing in rural areas in the 1960s (Richards 1983), first as a novelty, then as a staple in the immediate aftermath of war, when it was imported in huge quantities as humanitarian aid (Bolten 2008). Red rice could only be grown from seed that had been saved or grown after a decade of war, during which rebels had habitually raided seed stores (Bolten and Marcantonio 2021), causing the value of red rice to rise. White rice is sold in 35-or 50-kg bags, while red rice, because of its relative scarcity and demand, is typically sold by the cup or kilo.…”