Credited to Guinea-Bissau. Mangrove rice farming is practiced along the wider Upper Guinea coast and by other groups in Guinea-Bissau such as the Felupe, Manjaco, Nalu and Beafada, so no single country can claim the technique outright. The entry covers the Balanta system, whose rise in present-day Guinea-Bissau is documented by the historian Walter Hawthorne.
How it began
The historian Walter Hawthorne dates the rise of Balanta paddy rice to the end of the 16th and the start of the 17th century. As violence tied to the expanding Atlantic slave trade spread across coastal Guinea-Bissau, Balanta communities withdrew to isolated riverine areas near mangrove swamps. There they set up defensive villages and developed what he calls highly sophisticated paddy-rice production. The Balanta were a stateless society living near the slave-trading kingdom of Kaabu.
Before it existed
In the 16th century the Balanta were dispersed across upland areas. They grew yams and other crops that needed relatively small inputs of labor. Mangrove forest covered the tidal margins that were later turned into fields; the mangrove rice fields of today are defined by the former presence of that forest.
How it works
Farmers cut the mangroves and build a main earthen dike to keep seawater out. Inside it, smaller bunds divide the land into plots that hold fresh rainwater, so rice grows in standing water for most of its cycle. A new field is planted three to five years after the dike is built, the time rain needs to leach salt from the soil. Dikes, ridges and furrows are made with a long hand plow. The fields are called bolanha in Kriol. Drain pipes made from palm trunks let water in and out, and some diked ponds are kept for fish.
What changed first
According to Hawthorne, the Balanta kept their political independence through their households despite living close to Kaabu. From the middle of the 17th century they produced and traded large quantities of paddy rice, organizing the heavy work of dike building and field preparation through age grades.
What lasted
Rice grown in swamp and lowland freshwater fields came to account for about 63 percent of the country's rice land, against 37 percent for upland rice, according to figures cited in a 2024 review. The spread of rice fields into former mangrove also shaped the coast: IUCN reports that mangrove area in Guinea-Bissau fell by 32 percent over 80 years, with rice expansion peaking in the early 2000s.
Where it stands today
The system is still worked by hand and needs constant dike maintenance. IUCN reports that changing rainfall, rising seas and the departure of young people for cities have led farmers to abandon many fields. A restoration project supports communities in reinforcing the dikes of the fields they most need and, in return, opening the dikes of abandoned fields so that tides and mangrove seedlings can return.
