The Niari valley is a fertile region in the

Niari Department Niari (can also be written as ''Niadi'') is a department of the Republic of the Congo in the western part of the country. It borders the departments of Bouenza, Kouilou, and Lékoumou, and internationally, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of th ...

in the south west of the

Republic of the Congo The Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo), is a country located on the western coast of Central ...

. The soil in the area is good and this state is an important agricultural and industrial region.

Geography

The Mayombé Escarpment in the Republic of the Congo rises to and runs parallel with the coast. It is a forested area with high rainfall. Inland from this and at a lower elevation is the Niari Valley. It is an area of

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

h and woodland and the rainfall here is lower. The valley has most of the country's

agribusiness Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy, in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit ...

es and the main crops are

coffee Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...

, cocoa,

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

and

palm oil Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 36% of global oils produced from o ...

. Livestock is also reared in this area. The River Niari is not used for transport because the navigable stretches are separated by frequent rapids, and where it flows through the Mayombé Escarpment there are gorges. Big game such as

elephant Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant ('' Loxodonta africana''), the African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''), and the Asian elephant ('' Elephas maximus ...

leopard The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant cat species in the genus ''Panthera''. It has a pale yellowish to dark golden fur with dark spots grouped in rosettes. Its body is slender and muscular reaching a length of with a ...

and buffalo still roam in this area, especially in the Mount Fouari Reserve.

History of agriculture

The Niari Valley has an area of about 400,000 hectares. Three quarters of this is fertile land with a deep layer of humus. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the families of a group of people that had been in the

French Resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...

in Aubeville, France, moved to the valley to set up a communal farming project. At the time some pioneering French farmers were already located in the valley but there were few native inhabitants in the area. The valley had the advantage of having the only railway line in the country running through it. The new settlers were granted a concession of 5,500 hectares but encountered difficulties in their early years, including plant pests and diseases, droughts and occasionally hailstorms. They did small-scale crop raising, poultry rearing and livestock husbandry, and tried out new crops such as

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

, groundnuts and

. Not long afterwards, research stations were set up by the French state which planted oil-palm plantations, built mills to extract the oil, mechanized the production of peanuts, experimented with growing ''

Urena lobata ''Urena lobata'', commonly known as Caesarweed or Congo jute, is a tender perennial, variable, erect, ascendant shrub or subshrub measuring up to to tall. The stems are covered with minute, star-like hairs and often tinged purple. Considered a ...

'', planted

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

and built a sugar refinery, mechanized rice production, and grew

citrus ''Citrus'' is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the family Rutaceae. Plants in the genus produce citrus fruits, including important crops such as oranges, mandarins, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, and limes. ''Citrus'' is nativ ...

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

s and

pineapple The pineapple (''Ananas comosus'') is a Tropical vegetation, tropical plant with an edible fruit; it is the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae. The pineapple is indigenous to South America, where it has been culti ...

s. Other enterprises included prospecting for minerals, a tree nursery for limba was established and a herd of about 2,000

N'Dama N'Dama is a breed of cattle from West Africa. Other names for them include Boenca or Boyenca (Guinea-Bissau), Fouta Jallon, ''Djallonké'' or ''Djallonké cattle'', Fouta Longhorn, Fouta Malinke, Futa, Malinke, Mandingo (Liberia), and N'Dama Peti ...

cattle was built up. In 1970 the agricultural assets and the sugar plantations were nationalised and became a state run organisation, ''Société Industrielle et Agricole du Niari''. By 1978 there had been an 80% decline in sugar production and the company went bankrupt, owing large sums to the treasury. The same year, it was broken into three parts, one being ''Sucrerie du Congo''. By 1988, sugar plantations covered 22,000 hectares, but, after a few good years, the labour force had grown too large and productivity had fallen, so in 1991 the company was privatised once again under the name ''SARIS-Congo''.

References

{{reflist Agricultural regions Geography of the Republic of the Congo Niari Department Agriculture in the Republic of the Congo