Adoption of improved land use technologies to increase food security in Burkina Faso : relating animal traction, productivity, and non-farm income

This article analyses the determinants of animal traction adoption, and for traction and non-traction groups, the levels of land and labour productivity in Burkina Faso. The data used to estimate the model are from an ICRISAT survey, 1981-85, with 454 observations for the Sudano-Sahelian zone and 230 observations for the Guinean zone. There are three main conclusions. First, non-farm income was found to be an important indirect determinant of farm productivity, and ability to intensify production, via its effect on animal traction adoption. This was, in particular, the case for the zone where agriculture commercialization is occurring (the Guinean zone). Second, in a region where farmers were traditionally, and even now, thought to be tied to safety-first, subsistence strategies, the findings show that improved capital and variable inputs (traction and fertilizer and manure, and even labour and best quality land) are applied on cash crops, not on subsistence crops. Third, animal traction greatly improves land and labour productivity, particularly in more favourable agroclimatic zones such as the Guinean zone, and in the 'intensification crops' that are also the main cash crops (maize and cotton). Traction farmers have an advantage in the quest to intensify farming in a region where population density is increasing rapidly.