Agricuture production and livestock in center cotton area in C?te d’Ivoire. Economic development, natural resources management and producers’s conflicts

摘要

Central part of cotton area in C?te d’Ivoire is still sparsely populated (20?habitants per km 2), so that large low-used land and range land resources are remaining. However, agrarian situations are historically diverse in this wide region and they have changed quickly during the 20?last years due to settlement of farmers and livestock breeders from North CI (Senoufo region), Burkina Faso and Mali. Despite this availability of natural resources, more and more conflicts between farmers and herders are observed, land tenure tenses are appearing between migrant farmers (Sénoufo) and natives (Koros, Tagbanas), and, over all, preservation and maintenance of renewable natural resources are lowly considered by all of producers. Economical strategies and acting of rural players in this region are diverse: native land- owners manage to get ground rent by hiring land for annual crops to migrant farmers; these ones count on the one hand on a rapid exploitation of the granted lands, using inputs and equipment provided by the cotton sector, and, on the other hand, they don’t waver in moving to develop uncultivated areas; stock breeders look for alliances with political authorities and administration to strengthen their position. The low cost of access to land and services (inputs and farm equipment supply, animal health) allowed migrants farmers and transhumant herders to develop quickly their activities. The land conquest strategy of migrant farmers has been strengthened by native populations who consider installation of these farmers an efficient way to develop local economy. Population increase, maintenance of tracks network by the cotton society, arrival of new capacities lead to development of trade and services (forges and mechanic workshops, rice-husking units, mechanised transport,….). On the other hand, the conflicts between farmers and herders are still remaining. This can be explained by the diversity of cattle’s owners (fulani herders and also traditional chiefs, administration staff, urban traders and comfortably off farmers). All of them want to develop livestock without consultation to regulate access to range-land and herd moving and without investment in flock tending. Economical logic usually outweighs hazy objectives related to space and natural resource management. Regional or local policies of space and natural resources management hardly emerge in that region of Ivory Coast, due first to social causes (lack of common goals and projects, large flows of migrants) but are also explained because the consultation framework is weak or missing at the local (village) or regional level (“pays rural”, “sous-préfecture”). To support rural people in defining regulations to accede to and manage natural resources, one’s has to let them to figure out objectively the functioning of their territories. It requires land use maps (even simplified) and updated census data (people, cattle, crop areas). This type of work has to be held at the village site level but could be envisaged on larger territories in order to steer populations’ and cattle’s moving as well as building of infrastructures.