Understanding farm trajectories and development pathways: Two decades of change in southern Mali

Abstract

Institutional support for smallholders has been the motor for the expanding cotton production sector in southern Mali since the 1970s. Smallholder farms exhibit diverse resource endowments and little is known on how they benefit from and cope with changes in this institutional support. In this paper we explore farm trajectories during two decades (1994 to 2010) and their link with farm resource endowment and government support. We distinguished a favourable period for cotton production and an unfavourable period during which institutional support collapsed. A panel survey that monitored 30 farms in the Koutiala district in southern Mali over this period was analysed. Based on indicators of resource endowment and using Ascending Hierarchical Classification (AHC), farms were grouped into four types: High Resource Endowed farms with Large Herds (HRE-LH), High Resource Endowed (HRE) farms, Medium Resource Endowed (MRE) farms and Low Resource Endowed (LRE) farms. Average yield, labour productivity and food self-sufficiency status of each type were calculated. Farms remaining in the same type were classified as 'hanging in', while farms moving to a type of higher yields, labour productivity and food self-sufficiency status were classified as 'stepping up', and farms following the opposite trajectory of deteriorating farming conditions were classified as 'falling down'. The LRE farms differed from all other farm types due to lower yields, while both LRE and HRE farms differed from the MRE and HRE-LH farm types due to a combination of less labour productivity and less food self-sufficiency. During those two decades, 17% of the farms 'stepped up', while 70% of the farms remained 'hanging in', and only 13% of the farms 'fell down'. We found no obvious negative impact of the collapse of government support on farm trajectories. For MRE, HRE and HRE-LH farms, average N and P use intensity increased from 1994 to 2004 and then decreased during the following cotton crisis. On the other hand, organic fertilizer use intensity increased continuously over the entire monitoring period for HRE-LH and MRE farms. Crop yields did not change significantly over time for any farm type and labour productivity decreased. We discuss how technical options specific for different farm types (increase in farm equipment, sale of cereals, incorporation of legumes and intensification of milk production) and broader institutional change (improvement in finance system and infrastructure, tariffs) can enhance 'step up' trajectories for farming households and avoid stagnation ('hanging in') of the whole agricultural sector.

Home garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia

“…Each of the identified farm types was named after the crops with the major area shares in 2013. In order to classify farms based on the same criteria over time, thresholds of area shares were derived based on the variation within each farm type, following Falconnier et al (2015). Considering these thresholds, we developed a decision tree to classify each farm into a distinct farm type for the six benchmarks in the timeline 1991-2013.…”

Trajectories of agricultural change in southern Mali

“…Livestock provide draught power, milk, meat, manure, and a buffer against risk (Kanté, 2001). Farming is the major livelihood strategy, with achieving food self-sufficiency the farmers' main objective (Bosma et al, 1999) and cash-oriented non-farm activities providing a small (12%) but important share of the income per capita (Losch et al, 2012 (Falconnier et al, 2015b). Farmers participating in this research originated from nine neighbouring villages of the Koutiala district: M'Peresso, Nitabougouro, Nampossela, Finkoloni, Try, Koumbri, Karangasso, N'Goukan and Kani.…”

“…The major livestock are cattle, sheep and goats. On average, farmers own 10 Tropical Livestock Units (TLU) of 250 kg with a wide range from 0-54 TLU (Falconnier et al, 2015b). Besides milk and meat, animals provide draught power for timely farming operations to cope with the erratic distribution of rainfall, while application of livestock manure in the fields has positive feedbacks on crop productivity (Kanté, 2001).…”

“…Historically, The region has shown promising agricultural intensification pathways linked to cotton production (Benjaminsen et al, 2010;Falconnier et al, 2015b) and cotton earnings have been re-invested in livestock (Dufumier and Bainville, 2006). Livestock contributes to enhanced land productivity and food self-sufficiency (Tefft, 2010), thanks to draught power and manure provision.…”

“…Farmers in Southern Mali grow cotton for income generation, cereals for food selfsufficiency and keep livestock for a wide variety of reasons, including draught power, manure, meat, milk and buffer against risk (Falconnier et al, 2015b;Kanté, 2001). Due to market uncertainty and increasing land pressure, agriculture needs to adapt to the decline in cotton profitability (Coulibaly et al, 2015) and reduced availability of fodder for livestock (Breman, 1992;De Ridder et al, 2004;Leloup, 1994 lime) can enhance crop productivity and contribute to maintenance of healthy soils (Vanlauwe et al, 2015).…”