Farmer adaptation, change and ‘crisis’ in the Sahel

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Abstract

Perceptions of a continuing crisis in managing Sahelian resources are rooted in five dimensions of the Sahel Drought of 1972–1974 as it was understood at the time: crises in rainfall (drought), food supply, livestock management, environmental degradation, and household coping capabilities. A closer examination of household livelihood and farming systems shows that adaptive strategies have been evolved in response to each of these imperatives. Illustrations are provided from recent research in north–east Nigeria. A systematic understanding of indigenous adaptive capabilities can provide a basis for policies enabling a reduction of dependency on aid assistance in the Sahel.

Section snippets

Prologue

The Sahel Drought took the international community, and Africanist researchers, by surprise (Savanna, 1973). Indeed, even some African governments were slow to recognise the plight of rural households (Sheets and Morris, 1974). The groundnut and cotton booms of the 1950s, and the optimism of independence in the 1960s, had provided no collective awareness amongst governments, or international agencies, of the kinds of shocks to which older farming people were, in fact, no strangers (Hastings,

What did we think we saw?

(1) A drought crisis: a natural disaster, in which several years of low rainfall were succeeded by two in which extreme deficits occurred (probability <0.01: Kowal and Kassam, 1975). Subsequently, as droughts persisted, alarming evidence accumulated of more persistent reduction in rainfall (Nicholson, 1983; Hulme, 2001). Such a decline, if incorporated into scenarios of global climate change, has awesome implications (Rosenweig and Parry, 1994). Technically viable indigenous systems of

Is there still a crisis?1

Sahelian farmers are still in business. There are more of them than there were 25 years ago, they produce more, and (in some areas) they have more animals (WALTPS, 1994). But measures of change in income or welfare are scarce. Indicators of the state of the natural environment tend to be contradictory or controversial (Warren, 1996). There is enormous diversity in the Sahel and simple generalisations should be rejected (Raynaut, 1997; Raynaut, this issue). Having said this, are farming systems

Farmers’ adaptive resources

The four Nigerian villages (Fig. 1), in which studies were maintained for four consecutive farming years, are located in the Sudanian and Sahelian vegetational zones, and vary in the major parameters of (1) rainfall (from mean values during the farming season from 571 to 345 mm during the period of study), (2) residential rural population density (from 223 to 11/ km2) and (3) accessibility to major markets (measured in distance to Metropolitan Kano).3

Ending dependency

These five illustrations of strategic adaptation represent, in turn, farmers’ responses to the five ‘crises’ of Sahelian orthodoxy identified earlier (Table 1). They call into question the value of a ‘crisis scenario’ and, in addition, draw attention to the diversity and the dynamics of farming households’ practice, in agreement with Raynaut's perceptive analysis (1997, p. 316). Where so many decisions are involved, so many peoples’ labour, and so many small, incremental investments, it also

Uncited Reference

Hulme, 1996.

Acknowledgments

The work reported in this paper was funded by the ESRC's Global Environmental Change Programme (Agropastoral Adaptation to Environmental Change in North East Nigeria, Project No L320253001), and the Natural Resources Systems Programme (Semi-Arid Production Systems) of the Department for International Development (Soils, Cultivars and Livelihoods in North East Nigeria, Project No R 5719). The DFID can accept no responsibility for any information provided or views expressed. We are grateful to

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