While the Gold Coast had a significant mining sector, agriculture remained the mainstay of the export economy, as well as the basis of the domestic economy. In terms of export volume and value, the most important export of the Gold Coast was cocoa. The agriculture sub-section is prefaced by a number of special reports relating to agriculture. British efforts to exert control over land and forests in the Gold Coast met with stiff African opposition. Moreover, the situation was exacerbated on the British side by the attitude of H.N. "Timber" Thompson, Conservator of Forests in Southern Nigeria and adviser to the Gold Coast government, upon whose recommendations the Forestry Department was established, in 1909. Thompson tended to regard African interests in forest areas as at best an unfortunate impediment to good forest management. "Owing to the European war and the consequent depletion of the Forest staff, the Department was closed down from 1 January 1916 to November 1919'. (Forestry Department Annual Report, 1920).The Gold Coast had a major indigenous fishing industry servicing the domestic market; however, it was not until the 1940s that serious consideration was taken of the possibility of fisheries' development. Records relating to mines commence from 1901, on the termination of the mines survey a small Survey Department was formed. Though closed at the beginning of the First World War, it was resuscitated in 1919. The Land Department was established in 1927 from the Land Branch of the Survey Department. For an account of British efforts to impose a Land Ordinance for the Gold Coast and African opposition, see David Kimble, A Political History of Ghana (Oxford, 1965).