| Abstract: |
This research is situated in south-eastern Senegal and tells the story of three indigenous, drought-tolerant crops - sorghum, fonio and bambara groundnut -, which are on the verge of disappearing from the local landscape despite their potential fit in the predicted drier climate in the area. Based on a case-study in a Bassari community, this work examines the processes driving transformations in agricultural production and crop portfolios by asking how crop diversity and related knowledge and practices change, why they change, who is affected, and what are the implications for resilience in the face of climate change. Using data from in-depth interviews, focus groups, archival documents,observations, and a systematic seed circulation survey, I argue that theabandonment of these crops results from a combination of demographic,political, and economic factors. National and international policies anddevelopment interventions together with market forces and historicallegacies, intersect with outmigration, dietary changes, access to land andgender-dynamics favouring the switch from indigenous to introduced water-demanding crops. My findings suggest that these temporal and cross-scaledynamics play a critical role to explain seed governance and the differentways farmers manage and access the seeds of indigenous versus introducedcrops, with consequences for farmers' seed sovereignty. My results alsoshow differences across gender and wealth regarding who bears most of thecosts and who benefits the most from the shift from indigenous tointroduced crops, with women and poor households belonging to the mostdisadvantaged groups. Drawing on theories of political ecology, resilience, and indigenousknowledge, I argue that crop diversity is produced and situated withinhistorical contexts and dynamic relations of power and that resilienceneeds to be understood as relational, contextual, social and politicallyembedded process. In the light of climate change, supporting resilience inrural agrarian communities entails that farmers re-gain sovereignty,knowledge, and control over their own agroecologies, which can only bedone by addressing historical agrarian injustices. |
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(Center International en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, CIRAD (Montpellier, França))
