Beyond controversy, putting a livestock footprint on the map of the Senegal River delta

Abstract

The Senegalese delta, like many other agricultural territories in the Global South, is experiencing changes in agricultural trajectory. These changes are related to the promotion of competitive and performance-based forms of agriculture. In a context of tense relations between farmers and herders, the quest for equitable access to land, which is a guarantee of peace, stability, and balanced economic and social development, is being called into question by the arrival of capital investors and new actors that are highly supported by the State. This situation raises questions about two important issues: (i) the challenge of the sustainable management of natural resources, especially land; and (ii) the socio-political stakes related to the fact that land is a sensitive resource, both politically and socially. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that dominant discourses are being built around representation of unused and available lands. The aim of this article is to address this controversy by questioning land-use planning processes and tools and underlining the reality depicted. We demonstrate that discourses around land availability are built upon sectoral visions that tend to overshadow the realities of land use. Indeed, livestock farming and particularly its mobile form (i.e., pastoralism) is rendered invisible by not being considered in the majority of land-use and agricultural policies. Through a participatory survey of campsites, we show that gathering basic information on livestock farming should not to be reduced to technical issues. Beyond that, we acknowledge that these land-use issues are rooted in sector-based and neoliberal visions of development. We conclude by discussing the importance of effective decentralization in financial and technical means and the development of systemic proficiency that goes beyond normative sectoral views to acknowledge and act on territorial development.

Introduction

Hunger and other forms of malnutrition continue to be society’s great challenge (Godfray et al., 2010), while the increasing climate variability jeopardizes global food systems and agricultural development, notably in the most vulnerable areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (Thornton et al., 2011).

Certain policy efforts seek to eradicate food insecurity by 2030 (FAO et al., 2015). In order to align these goals with the looming prospect of feeding 9.7 billion people by 2050, transformative changes in the agricultural sector seem indispensable (Cole et al., 2018). Notwithstanding fervent and continuous support in favor of agricultural intensification, a large corpus of literature has underlined certain limits in terms of ethics, diminishing returns, and increasing externalities (Matson and Vitousek, 2006). Land conversion is seen as a complementary pathway, promoting the dedication of even greater amounts of arable lands for agricultural purposes (Cole et al., 2018). This paradigm follows the rationale that investing in land considered underutilized will compensate for production shortfalls (Byerlee et al., 2013). In practice, land investments in the agricultural sector are increasingly targeting SSA (Interdonato et al., 2020), portrayed a decade ago as underutilizing land. “Of the 183 million hectares (ha) of cultivated land in SSA, 95% is rain-fed and less than 5% benefits from some type of Agricultural Water Management (AWM)—by far the lowest irrigation development rate of any region in the world” (World Bank, 2013:30).

Along with underutilized land, marginal lands are also targeted to expand production schemes. Considered as uncultivated, these lands may harbor other types of value but are nevertheless seen as “suitable for commercial agriculture” (Exner et al., 2015:652). In the last decade, researchers have shown the costs associated with converting land from other uses to agricultural. For instance, Smith (2013) showed that out of the 3 billion ha suitable for crop production at the global scale, one-half was cultivated. Converting the other half, covered by forested areas, would entail high environmental and operating costs. Others have shown concerns regarding increasingly scarce land (Lambin et al., 2013), and the multiple and often conflicting demands for land that engender that scarcity (Smith et al., 2010). This apparent scientific consensus is challenged by studies identifying potential for land conversion at regional levels, often under the term of Potentially Available Cropland. Studies by Anon (2003) highlighted that land conversion will still be on the agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa until 2030, when it is expected to contribute 27 % of the region’s crop production. In 2011, the World Bank reported that 445 million hectares of potentially available uncultivated lands (globally), almost half of which is located in SSA, could benefit from agricultural investment (Deininger and Byerlee, 2011).

This rationalization is generally combined with the promotion of land investments led by agro-industries with the assumption that they will better address the challenge of reducing yield gaps (Deininger and Byerlee, 2011). Additionally, the emphasis on business in agriculture is justified by its contribution to alleviating global food insecurity and poverty (World Bank, 2019), and the expected trickle-down benefits to localized food security (Stiglitz, 2015). These narratives have taken root in rural areas of developing countries, propelled by government and Foreign Donor Funded Projects, where economic development and food security agendas are intertwined and bound by neoliberal ideologies (Mediavilla and Garcia-Arias, 2019). In line with Rostow’s stages of development (1990), narratives are built upon indicators of productive efficiency with horizons of modernity and economic growth (Weis, 2010). This dominant conceptualization of agricultural productivity for development has fostered the global emulation of industrial capitalist agriculture (Ross, 2013), manifesting in the rise of large-scale land acquisitions (Johansson et al., 2016, Nolte and Chamberlain, 2016) and the worldwide proliferation of land grabbing (Zoomers et al., 2016, Edelman et al., 2018).

In this international context of pressure on agrarian land and the commodification of agricultural space, the Senegalese government has undertaken policy and institutional reforms that sustain a vision of rural development directed towards highly productive sectors and the promotion of private agricultural initiatives (Bourgoin et al., 2019). The meta-analysis on agribusiness investments proposed by Bourgoin et al. (2019) showed hotspots for land investments, and in particular the delta of the Senegal River valley (commonly called “delta” throughout the article). Here, “modern forms of agriculture” (Ancey and Monas, 2005) are propelled by government-led projects. One example is the Project for Inclusive and Sustainable Agribusiness Development (PDIDAS), which has been operating since 2014 with a 43 billion XOF loan from the World Bank. The project’s rationale was justified by the fact that land is available for private investors to further develop horticultural production (PDIDAS, 2015, Mbaye Diop et al., 2017). This vision of modernity seems to be in contradiction with historical depictions of the area, portrayed as rich in pastoral activities (Michel and Sall, 1984, Tourrand, 1993a, Tourrand, 1993b, Corniaux et al., 1998). In practice, the discourses on land availability have met resistance within civil society, fostering the federation of a network of NGOs against the dynamics of land grabbing under a common umbrella organization called CRAFS (Faye et al., 2011, Kanoute et al., 2011, GRAIN, 2012, Bagnoli et al., 2015, Fall and Ngaido, 2016). At another scale, the Delta experienced several, more quantifiable local uprisings that opposed land acquisitions by agribusiness projects in the 2010 s (d'Aquino et al., 2017).

The aim of this article is to address the controversy around unused and available lands by questioning land-use planning processes and tools. How inclusive are these tools and which reality do they depict? Current representations of land use seem inconsistent. Either pastoral activities, often portrayed as anachronistic (Magrin et al., 2011), have naturally declined in number and been replaced by what the government defines as “modern forms of agriculture” (Ancey and Monas, 2005), or, as we hypothesize, discourses on land availability have obscured the existence of practices that do not fit the values of a certain vision of agricultural development. Our specific intention here is to compare the representation of agricultural practices by current information systems with the reality of actual practices found in the field. We use simple but efficient methods to expose practices that have a limited spatial footprint in a data scarce environment. We also discuss current and future risks related to overlooking these practices.