Introduction

In certain direct and indirect ways, the Second World War was a major international factor in shaping Vihiga's agricultural environment during the 1940s, especially in the efforts to cope with land degradation. Agricultural developments in Vihiga in the first half of that decade elicited a strong inconsistency between provisioning the war effort through agricultural and labor supplies and preventing soil erosion. The outbreak of the war propelled Vihiga toward an intensive agricultural system, which further threatened the welfare of the land, as government policy shifted away from seeking permanent solutions to land degradation to a rigorous war-effort program. As far as the administration was concerned, the war required urgent attention to increased crop production and available African labor, even if this compromised efforts to protect the land. Some officials raised concerns over the negative consequences of the wartime program on slowing down conservation efforts, but the economic interests of the colonial government and the war needs of the imperial authorities in London superseded this trepidation.

The war-effort program was also accomplished against a backdrop of concerted rural resistance to soil conservation, still led by a fully fledged NKCA. Households sought to reap the benefits of the economic boom occasioned by the war, but they were unwilling to jeopardize those benefits by diverting invaluable labor to burdensome conservation measures. Compulsion and legislation therefore persisted in select conservation programs implemented during the war. Ideally, a successful war-effort program required maintaining a delicate balance between compulsion and legislation to avoid antagonizing farmers to whom the administration looked to meet the demands of the war.

Producing for the War

Works by several scholars have recognized Africa's contribution to the successful execution of the Second World War by European powers. Such works, focusing mainly on Western and Southern Africa, have reinforced our understanding of the nature of colonial war-effort programs, the role of the continent's natural resources in the war, and the impact of the conflict on Africans. Vihiga contributed to this global conflict in the form of food crop supplies and labor. Agricultural production and mobilization of human resources to aid the war also influenced the quality of the agricultural environment.