Resource information
Empirical modelisation of socio-economic determinants in smallholder farming management in southwest of Burkina Faso. The study aims at identifying farmer’s decision rules and the socio-economic determinants of organic resource dynamics. Decision rules study and socio-economic determinants of organic resource dynamics allowed quantification of their impact on these organic resource dynamics. The main results of the investigations reveal that principal decision rules are edicted and managed by local authorities. These decision rules concern collective management and access to the cultivated land, grazing land, and homestead and to the bush. Farmers have also a diversity of individual rules covering production, consumption, marketing and relations between themselves. Survey of a sample of one hundred farmers selected for their representativity allowed to quantify relations between farm needs and their organic resource use. These relations permitted developing empirical statistical models (needs of land to cultivate, food grains needs, cash needs, fuel wood needs) depending on farming system. Fuel wood needs were established with survey measured data. These needs expressed in kilogramme consumed wood per day per person were established for the dry season (0.97 kg per person and per day) and for the wet season (1.36 kg per person and per day). Average fuel wood consumption per person and per day has an exponential decay when the household size increases. When land is available, land need for cultivation mainly depends on labour availability. Food grain needs is constant (180 kg per person and per year). It is the same in both farming systems studied. Money needs depend on cash crop surfaces, livestock’s products and extra agricultural activities of the farmer.
