Potentials and perils on periurban agriculture in a West African coastal region.
- Publikations-Art
- Kongressbeitrag
- Autoren
- Floquet, A.
- Erscheinungsjahr
- 1999
- Veröffentlicht in
- Proceedings of The International Symposium of AFSRE
- Herausgeber
- Doppler, W. and Koutsouris, A.
- Verlag
- Margraf Verlag , Weikersheim
- ISBN / ISSN / eISSN
- 3-8236-1320-0
- Seite (von - bis)
- 357-367
- Tagungsname
- Third European Symposium on Rural and Farming Sytems Analyses: Environmental Perspectives
- Tagungsort
- Hohenheim
- Tagungsdatum
- 25.-27.3.1998
This paper deals with changes in agriculture in a periurban area on the coastal region in West Africa. Cities are growing rapidly and we analyse how farmers in periurban areas adjust to the increasing demand of new consumption markets. In the South of Benin, periurban areas are densely populated and farm size is about 0,5-1 ha per worker. Patterns of diachronic changes can be observed spatially in comparing three situations. These case studies reveal trends towards unsustainable intensification of land use. Actual practices for gathering firewood supplying urban markets also worsen depletion of soils and natural vegetation. This reinforces young farmers in their search for exit options. But those options are also rather risky.