Is neo-liberalism widening the differences between West African family farmers and agribusiness enterprises? Should regional agricultural policies focus solely on increasing production or should we value agriculture’s role in the management of natural resources and the provision of employment? If so, how can family farmers and their representative organisations be offered greater security of land tenure and a voice in policy-making?

A paper from the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) argues against the stereotyping of African farming systems as ‘traditional’ peasant or ‘modern’ farmer. Case studies suggest that policy-makers need to learn more about the complexity and adaptability of family-based farming and develop appropriate participatory support structures.

Profound changes are happening in West-African farming systems. State support for farmers is declining as international firms enter the market. A small number of agri-foodstuff businesses – specialising in exporting fruit or market-garden produce or supplying towns with meat products – are expanding amidst fierce competition for access to factors of production (capital and land). They benefit from privileged access to strategic information, banks, international firms and certain donor agencies.

Modernisation projects are often conceived and implemented without reference to the way the sector actually works. Thus across West Africa, the promotion of semi-mechanised oil-palm processing units is encouraging the emergence of new planters as disseminators of information which used to be the preserve of women – who are now being excluded from the palm oil sector.

There is considerable evidence that farming systems make the best use of local factor availability, respond to market signals and adapt to economic and institutional change:

• In the Senegal Delta, small family farms have achieved the best financial results, whereas large commercial farms are in trouble and have been unable to repay loans.
• In Burkina Faso’s cotton belt, medium-sized farmers owning a single oxen plough-team are the most productive.
• Five decades of sluggish performance in Mali’s vast Office du Niger irrigation scheme has now given way to profitable rice cultivation, market-gardening and livestock raising as competitive family farms using animal traction have responded to improved institutional and economic circumstances.
• Small producers have managed to weather the turbulence in the cotton industry in recent decades – pursuing alternative strategies when the price is so low that it is not worth growing – while many mechanised farms have had to sell their tractors.
• The report urge donors, aid agencies and governments to:
• encourage greater documentation of what is happening within the agricultural sector: farmer organisations are hampered in making a case for family farming by lack of evidence of its benefits
• recognise the risk of polarisation in the agricultural sector
• realise that formalisation of private land ownership, and creating a market in land where none existed before, will result in the development of patterns of land ownership that do not favour all people equally
• recognise from the experience of the Office du Niger that it is possible to achieve agricultural intensification without full ‘modern’ tenure security
• strengthen the capacity of farmers’ organisations to present viable alternatives to agri-business models 
• encourage the leaders of farmers’ organisations to learn from, and contribute to, regional and international research into agriculture’s broader contribution to agricultural development.

Source(s):
‘What future for West Africa’s family farms in a world market economy?’, Issue paper No 113, Drylands Programme, International Institute for Environment and Development, by Jean-François Bélières, Pierre-Marie Bosc, Bruno Losch, Stéphane Fournier and Guy Faure, October 2002 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 7 November 2003

Further Information:
Jean-François Bélières, Pierre-Marie Bosc and Bruno Losch
Département Territoires, Environnement et Acteurs (TERA)
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche
Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD)
73 rue J-F Breton
34398 Montpellier Cedex 5
France

Tel: +33 (0)4 6761 5622
Fax: +33 (0)4 6761 4415
Contact the contributor: bosc@cirad.fr

Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD)

Drylands Programme
International Institute for Environment and Development
3 Endsleigh Street
London WC1H ODD
UK

Tel: + 44 (0)20 7368 2117
Fax: + 44 (0)20 7388 2826
Contact the contributor: drylands@iied.org

Drylands Research

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