In the municipality of Abomey-Calavi in the Department of the Atlantic in South Benin, home gardens constitute at least 35% of the families' monthly sources of food, fruit, poultry and pigs. 43 home gardens were visited and 30 were selected by reasoned choice for the survey itself. The objective of this study is to show the contribution of these home gardens to the food security of rural populations. The data concerned the size, floristic composition, phytogeographical distribution, the years of creation of home gardens, the various uses of plants, the incomes brought by plants such as bananas, palm trees, coconut trees and teak. Individual structured interviews were used to interview households. Indices of diversity such as Shannon-Wiener and Jaccard have made it possible to categorize these home gardens and to specify their biological richness. The size of these gardens ranges from 200 m 2 to 8300 m 2 . The average percentage of species grown in home garden is 55% for their nutritional values, 29% for their medicinal values, 7% for the wood and energy needs of the populations. Half of the species found, have a wide geographical distribution. Income from these agrosystems sometimes cover partially or totally the children's school fees. This study has therefore shown the importance of home gardens in the municipality of Abomey-Calavi in a context of climate variability and increasingly pronounced demographic pressure on natural resources.

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Background: Agriculture is an activity that provides more than 70% of employment in sub-Saharan African countries. However, climate variability has significant negative impacts on agricultural productivity, particularly in countries such as Benin that are highly dependent on rainfall. The objective of this research is to highlight the different perceptions and endogenous strategies of adaptation to climate variability adopted by farmers. It took place in Benin's largest cotton production area, the commune of Banikoara located in the northern region of the country. Methodology: The surveys were conducted on a sample of 120 farmers randomly selected in four (4) villages, all of which are large agricultural producers, i.e. 30 farmers per village. In addition to descriptive statistics based on the calculation of proportions and averages, a multivariate probit model was estimated in order to identify the factors that influence the choice of endogenous adaptation strategies to climate variability. Results: Approximately 50% of the respondents stated that they had practiced early seeding in order to cope with the consequences of climatic variability, 38% stated that they practiced ridge tillage, 28% indicated that they practiced late seeding while 15% declared that they practiced agroforestry. The results show that farmers use different combinations of endogenous strategies to drastically mitigate the adverse consequences of climate variability. Each farmer takes a number of parameters into account when defining the strategy to adopt.