Abstract

The Yorùbá ethnic group of West Africa, an urban people, resided in walled towns in pre-colonial times but farmed the surrounding areas in villages devoted to agriculture. In this chapter, I argue that this traditional, pre-colonial agrarian culture informs contemporary agrarian visions of urban sustenance. This chapter explores the Yorùbá agrarian practice of urban-hinterland relations as exemplified in the farm-village practice using the notion of indigenous geographies. The outlying farming practice reveals a spatial thought that drew attention to the importance of the physical environment, agronomic practices and social institutions in human–environment interactions. Its impact on the indigenous political system is evident in the agricultural food system, political identities and territorial formation. Conversely, it informs emerging agrarian ideas on the post-colonial landscape. The chapter concludes that the satellite farm-village as a cultural lens offers a spatial interpretative framework to rethink eco-social balance for the sustenance of urban populations and the protection of the physical environment in contemporary modernizing attempts on the agricultural landscape.