THE STRUGGLE FOR PRODUCTION

The production of agricultural and craft goods may be represented as a continuing struggle, pitting the energies and inventiveness of man against the forces of nature. The struggle was not so much for basic subsistence and survival – for the economy produced a significant surplus in all except the infrequent years of serious drought – but for the best allocation of effort among the crops, animals and household chores competing for the producer's attention. Pursued by nagging fears of drought, flood, pestilence or glut, the producer strove to anticipate the developments of each year.

The struggle for production may be seen, first, at the level of maximizing the output of individual goods. For agricultural goods, this amounts to the choice among different varieties of a given crop, the methods of planting, care during growth, harvesting, processing and storing. Equivalent choices had to be made in methods of fishing and in techniques of breeding animal stock.

Each producer had, second, to decide on the effort to devote to each of a wide range of productive activities.A farmer's objective was not simply to produce a maximum amount of maize or palm oil, but to balance the efforts he applied to food crops, tree crops, domestic animals, handicrafts, perhaps fishing, and social responsibilities. The time he spent harvesting distant oil palms might prevent him from planting or tending a field of sweet potatoes. Dahomean farmers grew several different food crops in order to stagger the harvests, spread their risks, and vary their diet. Fishers had to choose where and when to fish, plus allocate time for repair and construction of fishing equipment.