Most Somalis are nomadic pastoralists they look down on farming
Agriculture land by country, Africa
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Many are still settled farmers or agro-pastoral regardless. Pretty much in every region where the soil is fertile enough and you don't have issues like the tsetse fly you will find tribes that farm despite all the brouhaha around "qotis". Arabs are the same. The proud Badu spits on the man who farms and settles down but even so when they find an oasis...
Somalis are agro-pastoralists not nomads, they did both farming and herding. At times they combined both.
Geeljire means camel herding , it does not mean nomad. We didn't just keep camels, they kept a bunch of other livestock Donkeys, horses, cows even. There is no geeljire culture.
If anyone is curious about it you can check out my thread on Agriculture. Somalis engaged in farming in almost every region of Historical Somalia, with most of the dense farming communities being clustered in the NorthWest , Harar Uplands and South.Central.
Somali Agricultural Revolution( 900-1600s) ?
I have been looking at various historical trends and linkages and came across. The Arab Agricultural Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Agricultural_Revolution which took places through the entirety of the medieval period. Which made me think that Somalia might have been connected to...
www.somalispot.com
Bantus never existed in NorthWest Somalia, Ogaden/Harar Uplands etc where Somali farming communities cultivated and exported exorbinant of amount of wheat, coffee and sorghum out of the port of Berbera and Zayla.
And the date palm plantations along the Eastern coast of Bari was similarly cultivated by local clans, not Bantus.
Outsourcing of farm labour to slaves only happened in the 19th century in the Southern Somalia, to increase production capacity and cut costs. This is before industrialization and machinery undercut large human labour requirements. It was driven by pure profit motive rather than some aversion to farming. It's similar to what happened in the New Age Americas.
And the farmland that was labored on was owned by native Somali farming communities who had been farming for centuries, they were the ones who purchased them.
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Most farmers today in Somalia are not even Bantus. All communities where it's farmeable engage in farming, it's not restricted to a single sub-set or group.
Somalia was pretty much food secure or self-sufficient throughout the 1970s-1980s and prior to colonialism they was net food exporters , even during the middle ages. Back then they didn't just farm in the south along the two rivers, there was even small scale local substistence farming happening everywhere , even in places like Hafun people farmed and produced food locally to support their communities. They carry out similar subsistence activities in many places today throughout the north as well.
It's not because they are not good at farming or we have unproductive lands that there is higher food insecurity in many places today, it has to do with the fact that cheap outdated produce and aid from America and Western world is flooding the markets that undermine local production and they can't even compete with their produce in the markets, they end up losing money they invested in their farms and have to scale back.
What Somalia needs is better economic protection and some form of subsidies for farmers.
Watch this video it goes throughout it :
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Here is source from year 1876 describing that most Hawiye are settled farmers in the inland regions away from the drier coastal plains.
''In the inland regions most of them appear to be settled agriculturalists, which is doubtless due to the greater elevation of this region, which is also better watered and more fertile than the low-lying coastlands"
Source: The Earth and Its Inhabitants, Africa: South and east Africa by Elisรฉe Reclus
Wherever the soil was fertile enough and where it was farmeable the same clans farmed the land.
You can also see this in the more fertile rainfed elevated interior of the NorthWest throughout the 1800s-1900s there was various farming villages labored by various Dir and Isaaq families. Towns like Gebiley, Burco, Borama and Hargeisa grew out of agricultural settlements.
Only the interior modern cities grew around fertile agricultural settlements like Burco, Borama and Hargeisa. They were essentially centers connected to farming villages . So i have no idea what @berberaboy66 @Garaad.XIV are on about, where there is suitable fertile land , Somalis farmed. Whether they farm or not has nothing to do with being lazy
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Arabsiyawi
HA Activist.
This is such a big lie. Southern tribes are agropastoral with a huge emphasis on the agro part. To say only slaves or "bantus" were farmers is not only insulting to them but to us as well. Somali culture isn't "geeljire culture" only.
He's a hooyo mataalo who seems to know close to nothing about the homeland. The way these kids talk you'd think they believe the Raxanweyn are Bantus or something. Every idiot knows practically half of the RX tribes living along the Jubba and Shabelle valley were historically settled agriculturalists or agro-pastoral and are certainly not Bantus. It's literally in the name of one of their main tribal divisions:
Rahanweyn - Wikipedia
Digil iyo Mirifle. Though even the tribes who don't come under Digil practice cattle keeping and agriculture. My own mtDNA N1a1a3 comes from my maternal great grandmother who mothered my paternally Majeerteen grandmother and was Raxanweyn herself of the Maalin Weyn who are "Mirifle". She herself belonged to a settled cultivator family and owned many cattle. And guess what? There's no genetic difference between her and northern Somalis. These kids are cringe to read, wallahi.
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Part of the problem is that there is this narrative spread by revisionist somali scholars that the authcnous pouplation of the jubba River valleys are actually somali bantu. And that the other somalis are recent arrivals and that they taught us agriculture. One of the biggest scholars behind this Theory was omar eno.He's a hooyo mataalo who seems to know close to nothing about the homeland. The way these kids talk you'd think they believe the Raxanweyn are Bantus or something. Every idiot knows practically half of the RX tribes living along the Jubba and Shabelle valley were historically settled agriculturalists or agro-pastoral and are certainly not Bantus. It's literally in the name of one of their main tribal divisions:
Rahanweyn - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Digil iyo Mirifle. Though even the tribes who don't come under Digil practice cattle keeping and agriculture. My own mtDNA N1a1a3 comes from my maternal great grandmother who mothered my paternally Majeerteen grandmother and was Raxanweyn herself of the Maalin Weyn who are "Mirifle". She herself belonged to a settled cultivator family and owned many cattle. And guess what? There's no genetic difference between her and northern Somalis. These kids are cringe to read, wallahi.
If that is true why is that the case? Any armchair here or elsewhere knows that Bantus being the main farmers is blatantly wrong.
People started propagating this narrative after the collapse of the Somali govt. But the reason is that there's no real proper books on somali history. There's some papers and articles here and there . But it's all fragmented nobody has gathered manuscripts and other materials to write even a basic survey of somali history. Let alone books on the different sultnates.
I think if you were gonna write a basic history of somalia i would first focus on the last 500 years. My sources at minium would be
1) futuh al habesha
2) the gadbursui chronicles
3) that one majeeerten chronicles idinlaa mentioned
4) the sources sharif aydrus used in his book on somali history
5) books on the darwish
6) geledi chronicles
7) European Explorer accounts
8) the later chronicles from harar
