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

Falconnier, Gatien N.; Descheemaeker, Katrien; Mourik, T.A. van; Sanogo, Ousmane

doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2015.07.005

Cited by 47 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(62 reference statements)

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“…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.…”

Section: Farm Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Home garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia

2017

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Home gardens in southern Ethiopia are regarded as efficient farming systems, allowing interactions and synergies between crop, tree and livestock components. However, these age-old traditional home gardens are evolving rapidly in response to changes in both the socio-economic and biophysical environment. Altered cropping patterns, farm size and component interactions may affect the systems' sustainability. Home gardens exhibit a huge diversity in farms and farming systems, which needs to be understood in order to design interventions for improvement. Dynamics of home gardens were studied over two-decades (1991-2013) based on a survey of 240 farm households and focus group discussions. Farms were grouped into five types: Khat-based, Enset-cereal-vegetable, Enset-based, Enset-coffee and Enset-livestock. Farm trajectories revealed a shift from food-oriented Enset-based and Enset-livestock systems to (1) cash crop oriented khat-based systems, and (2) combined food and cash crop oriented Ensetcereal-vegetable systems. In densely populated, market proximate areas a major trend was expansion of khat, from 6 to 35% of the area share per farm, while the combined area share of enset and coffee decreased from 45 to 25%. Concurrently, the cattle herd size fell from 5.8 TLU to 3.9 TLU per household. In medium populated, less accessible areas the trend was consolidation of combined production of food and cash crops. Enset and coffee together maintained a share of over 45%. Easy transport and marketing of the perishable cash-generating khat compared with traditional crops favoured its cultivation among smallholders located close to markets. The insights in home garden change in response to increasing population pressure, decreasing farm size and market development may help to design interventions to increase system sustainability.

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Section: Farm Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Home garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia

2017

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“…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.…”

Section: Study Area and Farm Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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.…”

Section: General Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trajectories of agricultural change in southern Mali

Falconnier

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Living income benchmarking of rural households in low-income countries

Ven¹,

Valença²,

Marinus³

et al. 2020

Food Sec.

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The extreme poverty line is the most commonly used benchmark for poverty, set at US$ 1.90 by the World Bank. Another benchmark, based on the Anker living wage methodology, is the remuneration received for a standard work week necessary for a worker to meet his/her family’s basic needs in a particular place. The living wage concept has been used extensively to address incomes of plantation workers producing agricultural commodities for international markets. More recently intense discussion has emerged concerning the ‘living income’ of smallholder farmers who produce commodities for international supply chains on their own land. In this article we propose a simple method that can be used in all types of development projects to benchmark a rural ‘living income’. We launch the Living Income Methodology, as adapted from the Living Wage Methodology, to estimate the living income for rural households. In any given location this requires about one week of fieldwork. We express it per adult equivalent per day (AE/day) and data collection is focused on rural households and their immediate surroundings. Our three case studies showed that in 2017 in Lushoto District, rural Tanzania, the living income was US$ PPP 4.04/AE/day, in Isingiro District, rural Uganda, 3.82 and in Sidama Zone, rural Ethiopia, 3.60. In all cases, the extreme poverty line of US$ PPP 1.90 per capita per day is insufficient to meet the basic human rights for a decent living in low-income countries. The Living Income Methodology provides a transparent local benchmark that can be used to assess development opportunities of rural households, by employers in rural areas, including farmers hiring in labour, while respecting basic human rights on a decent living. It can be used to reflect on progress of rural households in low-income countries on their aspired path out of poverty. It further provides a meaningful benchmark to measure progress on Sustainable Development Goal 1, eliminating poverty, and 2, zero hunger and sustainable food systems, allowing for consideration of the local context.

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

Cited by 47 publications

References 47 publications

Home garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia

Home garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia

Trajectories of agricultural change in southern Mali

Living income benchmarking of rural households in low-income countries

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