ABSTRACT
Soil, as everyone knows, is essential to plant growth, yet the Wola, who are highly skilful subsistence cultivators, maintain that assessment of it does not feature in their selection of garden sites. Their apparently offhand attitude to soil on potential cultivation sites is unexpected. According to them, an inspection of the soil before clearing it of vegetation for cultivation is not among the considerations that constrain and influence their choice of site, which include issues like cultivation rights as stipulated by their kin-founded land tenure system, site aspect and ease of enclosure, location relative to house and other gardens, and so on. Perhaps their apparently indifferent approach to soil use and management should not surprise us, for it seems to chime in with their contrary agricultural practices, of semi-continuous cropping within a swidden regime context.
