Community-owned Farm Settlement Schemes: Exploring an Alternative Agrarian Spatial Thought

Despite a history of alternative thinking in African agriculture, most agrarian futures remain vague. This article employs historical analysis and participatory mapping to examine alternative agrarian spatial thinking in the Ibadan rural hinterland of Southwest Nigeria. As successive waves of capitalist-oriented agricultural landscapes are experimented with and abandoned by the state, subaltern groups are reinterpreting some modernist settlement schemes within traditional spatial knowledge exemplified by the farm village practice. A visual complement to agrarian thought through maps and mapping reposition this thought-provoking process of community initiatives increasing the awareness of citizens and local organisations to embrace community-driven farm settlement schemes.