MATERIALS FOR THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF TANZANIAN AGRICULTURE: SOME MAPS FROM ADJECTIVES

ABSTRACT During the past 50 years, despite a number of studies, surveys, and a full scale agricultural census in 1971–72, Tanzania did not produced data on agriculture that permitted detailed mapping and analysis of the geographic pattern of crops. An alternative, qualitative method, based on the nine Agro-economic Zones studies published by Diana Conyers and her associates at the University of Dar es Salaam, is illustrated. The spatial distribution of adjectives, used systematically to characterize the importance of crops in 265 agro-economic zones, creates a descriptive geography of Tanzania's agriculture in the early 1970s. Though not without problems, use of such texts may in some cases provide an acceptable alternative way of mapping geographic information, when standard methods cannot be used. In this instance, maps of crop patterns in the early 1970s provide an historical baseline against which data from some future agricultural census of Tanzania can be compared.