Suchergebnisse

Metadata only record ; This report describes research on Sustainable Rural Livelihoods which was carried out in two villages in Mali, selected to represent the rain fed cereal and cotton producing regions. The research was carried out using an analytic framework which places an emphasis on the institutional arrangements through which people gain differentiated access to the bundle of capitals (natural, physical, human, economic and social) necessary to construct a livelihood. Livelihoods are seen to be composed of three strategies: agriculture, livelihood diversification and migration. The results highlight the importance of migration and livelihood diversification in allowing households to pursue particular paths of agricultural intensification, and show that access to diversification activities is differentiated by age, gender and household structure. Local perceptions of sustainability were used to rank households as more and less sustainable. The research shows how different types of household use the ranges of capitals available to them to construct a livelihood, and what barriers exist for the less well off. These village level findings are located within a picture of changing rural development policy at the national level.

Migration is a common & essential livelihood strategy in the risk-prone environment of Sahelian West Africa. But migration is not a passive reaction to economic & environmental forces. Patterns of movement are determined by context-specific & complex dynamics, mediated by social networks, gender relations, & household structures. IDS-based research on sustainable livelihoods illustrated this in two locations in Mali: (1) a village in the Sahelian dryland with different & gendered migration patterns of various ethnic groups; & (2) exceptional patterns in the Sudano-Sahelian cotton region with extensive & long-lasting engagement in small cocoa & coffee plantations in Cote d'Ivoire. 1 Table, 1 Map, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

Maize is one of the three most important staple foods in Mali. Zones in the country with high potential for producing maize are limited to areas where the probability of drought risk is between 20 and 40%, meaning that recurring droughts have long handicapped maize production. In an attempt to alleviate drought stress on maize production, a household survey was conducted in the two Local Government Areas of Bougouni and Koutiala, both in the Sikasso Region, during the 2007/2008 production period. These two districts were selected following an environmental characterization of drought zones in Mali. The survey was mainly oriented towards maize based farming systems. Six sample villages were selected within each of the two districts. The sample population was defined as maize farming households. A total of 150 households were randomly selected and interviewed with structured questionnaires. Interviews were conducted by trained enumerators using a formal household survey. The purpose of the study is to provide both quantitative and qualitative feedback from farmers to researchers and to the B&MGF on the impact that improved maize varieties developed in the past have had upon the livelihoods of households and to provide a detailed database for the projection of expected outcomes with the deployment of new drought tolerant maize varieties under the B&MGF drought tolerant maize project. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were used to extract from our set of variables those orthogonal linear combinations of the variables that best captured the common information. Most successful was the one proposed by Filmer and Pritchett (1998; 2001) called the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). To assess the variables affecting the adoption of improved maize varieties, the Tobit model was used. The results show that 99% of household heads are male. The size of a household is 22 persons, on average. About 47% of the household's members are available for farm work. About 59% of household heads are illiterate, an important factor concerning the adoption of new technology. These household heads make decisions about 84% of farming activities; 86% of the households involved in the study belonged to at least one farmers' organization in order to have easy access to inputs. ; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ; Peer Review