ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews from a baseline of empirical evidence of pre-existing roles the new roles that households assume in response to technological and environmental changes over time. The farming economy was organised within the framework of the compound, family households normally including one or two married brothers or married sons of the compound head. The period for which the vote for the Nutrition Field Working Party at Genieri was approved ended in the spring of 1950, and responsibility for the station was transferred to the Colonial Government. The Colonial Office report on The Gambia for the years 1950 and 1951 records that ‘the progress of development has been greatly assisted by the establishment in 1951 of the Farmers’ Fund from the profits of the newly constituted Gambia Oilseeds Marketing Board’. In Genieri, the area under upland rainfed rice had been reduced, and salt encroachments in the rice-growing swamps were being recognised as a more serious problem.
