Perennial grain crops may play an important role in environmentally sound and socially just food systems for Africa. We study the future possibility of integrating perennial grains into Malian farming systems from the perspective of agroecology, and more specifically using a gendered space approach. We interviewed 72 farmers across the sorghum-growing region of Mali. We found that perennial grains offer a vision for transforming human relations with nature that mirrors the resource sharing of customary land tenure, including patterns of extensive and intensive land use in time and space. Women interviewees identified a broad set of potential advantages and challenges to perennial grain production. Advantages include reduced labour, saving seed, and improving food security. Women farmers were concerned about livestock, water access, and resource limitations. We argue that perennial grains may increase access to land and natural resources for women farmers. Perennial grains may improve soil quality, reduce labour early in the rainy season, and provision more resources from fallow lands. Pastoralists stand to benefit from improved pastures in the dry season. We conclude that investments are needed to develop viable crop types in consideration of the complexity of West African farming systems and the local needs of women farmers and pastoralists.
The aim of this study is to compare the technical efficiency of System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and Conventional Rice Production System (CRPS) farmers in Mali. Using cross-sectional data for 208 randomly selected rice farmers, the Stochastic Meta Frontier model is applied. The results indicate that the mean technical efficiency is 0.96 and 0.79 for SRI and CRPS respectively. This implies that SRI farmers were more technically efficiency than their counterpart. Similarly, the mean technology gap ratio was 0.98 and 0.91 for SRI and CRPS farmers, respectively. We also find that rice paddy production (SRI) was positively influenced by labor and negatively by organic manure while rice paddy production (CRPS) was positively linked with inorganic fertilizer and land. Further investigation reveals that family labor and flooding level increased the technical inefficiency for SRI adopters whereas education had a negative impact. For the CRSP farmers, the current factors were unable to account for technical inefficiency except age of farm household head. Our study finds strong cause to encourage SRI adoption as it could be the highly searched for solution for farmers to increase their yields and eventually enhance their food security status.
Income poverty remains the main root of urban food insecurity as purchased food represents a major component of the spending of urban residents. The rapid and increasing urbanization and urban sprawl are major concerns for food security in Mali. In Mali, 3.6% of households, are severely food insecure and the food insecurity prevalence rate for urban households is 7.5%. The effect of urbanization on households’ food security was assessed in the literature using only a single measure of food security. In this regard, this study analyzed the effect of urbanization on both objective and subjective measures of food security in Mali, using data from the national survey on food security and nutrition (ENSAN). The data collection was conducted by the Early Warning System against Famine (SAP) on 9,782 households in February 2018. For the objective measure of food security, the study used an OLS model to estimate the effect of urbanization on household food expenditure per capita. Using the household hunger scale (HHS) score, the study estimated two models (logit and ordered probit) to capture the effect of urbanization on subjective measures of food security. The results of the OLS and logit models showed that households living in urban areas are less food secure compared to their counterparts living in rural areas. The results from the ordered probit also confirmed that urban households are more food insecure (mildly and moderately) compared to their counterparts living in rural areas. Based on these results, the study recommends to decision-makers to take into account urban poor households when setting up food safety net programmes.
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