Agroecology in West Africa

Agroecology is a concept first emerged during the 1930s, expanded as a discipline of science during the 1970s and 1980s, and was institutionalized in the 1990s.^[3] There has been an increasing number of publications related to agroecology since the 2000s.^[3] Agroecology as a movement was especially developed in the US and in Latin America, in reconsideration of the relationship between agriculture and the society and in response to the consequences of the Green Revolution. In 2018, FAO published a report for scaling up agroecology initiative globally, to meet the agenda of SDG 2, Zero Hunger.^[4]

The 20th Century model of the Green Revolution was introduced to West Africa by Rockefeller Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006. However the model that requires heavy inputs of machines, fertilizers, and other resources was not sustainable and strangled the small farmers.^[5] In February 2015, a global peasant alliance, La Via Campesina and Confederation of Peasants Organizations of Mali (CNOP) held the International Forum on Agroecology in Sélingué, south Mali, aiming to reinforce the shared vision of agroecology and synergy of a variety of sectors including farmers, workers, indigenous peoples, nomads, fisherfolk, consumers, the urban poor, etc. to induce a bottom-up approach of transformation.^[6]

In April 2018, 8 million euros was budgeted for the Agro-ecological Transition Support Project in West Africa (AETSP) coordinated by Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food (ARAA) of ECOWAS, covering Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Togo for 4 years.^[7] At the West African multi-stakeholder conference organized by the ROPPA and IPES-Food held in Dakar the same month, the Alliance for Agroecology in West Africa was formed with the purpose to further promote agroecological transition in West Africa, encourage cooperation between varied scales of research institutes, NGOs, farmers' organizations and social movements, and empower agroecological movements in West Africa. In January 2020, the alliance hosted a meeting in Dakar to finalize the extensive action plan to actualize agroecology in West Africa, where institutions such as FAO, IFAD, and DG DEVCO of the European Commission and donor organizations from Germany and France also participated actively.^[8]

The principle of agroecology is to apply the systems that traditional farmers in the region have developed and inherited. Agroecologists argue that such complex and diversifying farming systems help small farmers to survive harsh environments and produce what is necessary for subsistence with minimum usage of external inputs.^[6] La Via Campesina and other agroecological organizations claim that free trade policies and industrialized agricultural system with heavy use of chemicals and imported inputs destroys the environment, diminish resources, and disturb the health and wellbeing of small farmers that are large portion of the West African population as well as the consumers.^[9] The Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology at Nyéléni in Mali (2015) suggests that the solution to the climate change, malnutrition and other issues that West African countries are facing needs to come from transforming the industrial model and build the local food systems with new rural-urban links, with agroecological food production by peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, urban farmers, etc.^[10]

The types of agroecological practices existing in the region includes diversification, cropping associations and sequences, agroforestry, crop and livestock integration, management and conservation of soils and water, biological control and other pesticide alternatives, and peasant seeds, with the combination of traditional and more recently innovated practices, either native to the region or imported.^[11]

An example of agroecological practices in West Africa is Zaï, a traditional water harvesting technique that was revived in Mali and Burkina Faso. Farmers fill zaï or holes in the ground with organic matter, which induces fertilization and draws termites that improve the soil structure, leading to penetration of water that will be held in the soil. The farmers grow millet or sorghum in the zaï, which would be harvested, leaving the stalks with some height so that the young trees are protected from animals. The thousands of farmers in Yatenga region of Burkina Faso refined this technique and revived their land, which resulted in increasing the yields of cereal harvest per hector.^[12]

A research by AVSF in their CALAO project has shown positive impact of agroecological practices on agricultural income, generating two or three times higher income per working family for same surface area, compared to families that are not practicing agroecology.^[13] For example, an evaluation of the farming practice in Senegal comparing farms on the scale of the same surface area and climate environment indicates that the traditional Sérère practice of integration of agriculture and animal husbandry results in higher agricultural income per worker compared to a group of farms that do not follow this practice but have larger land and fairy equipped holdings. The former type of farms produce agricultural income average of 809,000 FCFA per a year with land availability of 1.5 ha, while the latter farms produced the average of 215,000 FCFA per a year within the same amount of land surface.

The same report also denote that labour intensiveness of agroecology can contribute to the improvement of underemployment, which is seen in areas researched in the report (parts of Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo).

The environmental benefits of agroecological practices in the region is still not significantly visual. There has been positive impact of the fertility of soils and carbon capture in soils. In Senegal, agroecological practices has had positive impacts on reforestation and increasing biodiversity according to the research by AVSF.^[13]