FAILED PROMISES AND DAMAGED ENVIRONMENT: WOMEN AND CONSEQUENCES OF POST-WW II AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION IN THE GAMBIA

This paper examines the understudied effects of Agricultural knowledge and technology transfer in The Gambia as part of a general quest to understand deforestation. The Gambia's agriculture continued to experience the adverse effects of environmental degradation, which restructured rainfall patterns and caused saltwater and lime intrusion in swampy agricultural lands, the domain of women rice growers in the country's gendered agricultural system. Much of the scholarship on West African environmental history challenges established colonial literature and policies that condemn the indigenous agricultural practices as environmentally profligate but fail to scrutinize the impact of agricultural technology and knowledge transfer on women. The studies on The Gambia generally remained silent on the environmental effects of mechanized agriculture.