Beyond intensification: landscapes and livelihoods in Mali’s Guinea Savannah

Abstract

For more than a decade, sub-Saharan Africa has been the focus of calls for a new Green Revolution. Like its predecessor, the African Green Revolution aims to increase the productivity of smallholder farmers, improving their own food security and income as well as that of the continent as a whole. This is to be done with minimum environmental damage, through "sustainable intensification." While sustainable intensification has shown potential in places where high population density precludes cropland expansion, evidence of its effectiveness in land-abundant, labor-limited areas is limited. One such landabundant, labor-limited area is the Guinea Savannah region of West Africa, which the World Bank called a "Sleeping Giant" where agricultural development could drive economic growth both locally and at the national level. Within the Guinea Savannah region, we use southern Mali's Bougouni district as a case study to explore potential futures for smallholder agriculture in the area.We explored the history of the area's agriculture using a panel data set for three villages, as well as remote sensing analysis and census data. Over the period of the panel data (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012), agricultural change was minor. Cultivated area per household was highly correlated with household size and the number of draft animals a household owned. This relationship remained constant over the full period, suggesting little change in labor productivity. Yields of major crops remained stagnant, even as fertilizer input increased. Cropland expansion occurred in parallel with population growth, but up to the present, over half the arable land in the study villages was not cultivated.Because uncultivated rangeland made up such a large percentage of the land, we characterized the productivity, management and use of these rangelands (Chapter 3). In two villages, we assessed biomass quantity and species composition at 2-month intervals, tracked a sample of village herds, and used remote sensing combined with regression analysis to map the productivity of herbaceous biomass in a woody savannah landscape. We found that rangelands produced a seasonal peak of 2-2.5 t/ha of herbaceous biomass, from a diverse mix of annual and perennial species, notably Andropogon gayanus and A. pseudapricus. Herds covered distances of 10-18 km each day, with distance and location variable based on the season. During most of the year, the forage supply far exceeded the demands of grazing herds, but in the late dry season forage becomes scarce and herders supplement grazing with cut tree fodders, or send herds on transhumance to the south. While rangelands are exploited for a variety of uses, local management has thus far maintained high levels of productivity and biodiversity.In order to evaluate the potential of sustainable intensification to meet its goals of reducing poverty and improving food security, we explored the solution space of possible gains from intensification f...

Not wrapped up in cotton wool : how risk influences farming in southern Mali

“…Also the neem oil and legume inoculant were not locally available. Ollenburger, 2019;Marinus et al, 2023). The results of Koutiala confirmed this.…”

“…Adaptation and iteration allow better tailoring of options to the farmers' context (Andrieu et al, 2019;Ronner et al, 2019). Dedicated stakeholder involvement is required from design to implementation of research projects to assure a match between demand and outcome of the process, and to increase efficacy of the interactions (Ollenburger, 2019;Schmidt et al, 2020).…”

“…Indeed, we identified health hazards as the most worrying for farmers. Also in other regions in Mali, farmers prioritized health above the need to improve land use practices (Ollenburger, 2019).…”

“…A next step in the (participatory) research could be to explore the potential of more transformative changes, given the constraints farmers have and the risks they are dealing with. For example, in the Bougouni area of Mali an agent-based model simulation indicated the income potential of targeting cashew production as a transformative option (Ollenburger, 2019). This option entailed an expansion of cultivated land, something that is not in line with the SI definition, and not feasible in the Koutiala area as land pressure is too high.…”

“…Moreover, fine-tuning cereal field management showed increased yields after augmenting fertiliser rates and adapting the variety in relation to the planting date Freduah et al, 2019;Adam et al, 2020), and in certain circumstances lowered the risk of yield loss (Huet et al, 2022). Overall, technological options contribute to eliminating poverty when aligned with farmers' priorities and context (Ollenburger, 2019;Ollenburger et al, 2019), but by themselves, technological options are insufficient for farmers in southern Mali to escape poverty (Falconnier et al, 2018) indicating an additional need for off-farm employment and market opportunities (Assogba et al, 2022). This stresses the importance of aligning SI options with farmers' decision-making processes and understanding where farmers are most willing to invest their limited resources, in order for the technology to reach its best potential.…”