Democracy and Development in Mali

Small-Scale Inland Valley Swamp Rice Production: A Viable Enterprise in the Grain-Cotton Farming System of Southern Mali

Small-Scale Inland Valley Swamp Rice Production: AViable Enterprise in the Grain-Cotton Farming System of Southern Mali GEORGES DIMITHE Introduction Until the early 1970s, Mali was self-sufficient in cereals. After the 1974 drought, food production failed to keep pace with the rapidly expanding demand for food, and between 1979 and 1991, per capita food production declined by an average of 0.7 percent per year.! As the gap between national food production and demand widened in the late 1980s, Mali became increasingly dependent on commercial imports and food aid. Rice imports alone accounted for approximately 26 percent of total rice consumption annually between 1984 and 1993. Agricultural productivity has improved since the early 1990s and Mali has significantly reduced cereal imports, especially rice. In order to improve food security, the government is seriously considering ways to intensify rice farming. There are two basic interrelated ways for the government to stimulate increased domestic rice production. One involves policy reforms to transform the rice subsector and the entire food system and stimulate broad-based economic growth. Such policies could raise real incomes, and/or lower real rice prices while maintaining incentives to rice farmers, processors, wholesalers, and retailers. The challenge is to identify such policies and to implement them successfully. Historically, government initiatives designed to achieve these goals focused on policies that artificially raised food prices for producers and lowered them for consumers through subsidies. However, because such policies have become fiscally unsustainable, food market reforms have been launched in Mali and throughout Africa. A second approach involves increasing farm-level productivity through investments in agricultural research and extension that account for local 189 190 GEORGES DIMITHE resources and farm-level conditions. The success of this approach, however, depends upon more than investments in research and extension. Complementary improvements in the tax code, better supply markets, and investments that strengthen marketing infrastructure-that is, roads linking production and consumption areas, market facilities, and market information systems-are also needed. This chapter examines this second approach. The discussion is organized in four parts. The first part highlights the importance of rice in Mali. The second part presents an overview of bas-fond (inland valley swamp) rice production , including the land tenure and the institutional environment under which farmers operate. The third part examines the potential for bas-fond rice production . And the fourth part focuses on the potential of the basjonds to increase rural household incomes and thereby increase household access to food.2 Rice is an Important Staple in Mali Mali's agricultural sector is characterized by a low level of diversity and a high degree of production variability that often leads to food deficits. The principal crops are cotton, cereals (sorghum, millet, rice, and maize), and groundnuts. Cotton, the main cash crop, is grown mostly in the southern part of the country by smallholders under a marketing guarantee with the Compagnie Malienne pour Ie Developpement des Fibres Textiles (CMDT). As such, cotton provides greater financial security to farmers than do food crops, as inputs (seed, fertilizer , pesticides, in-kind loans for animal traction) are guaranteed by the CMDT. Millet, sorghum, and maize are the major rainfed staple crops and they account for more than 80 percent of total area planted and more than 75 percent of total grain production. Rice, the only cereal grown under irrigation in this droughtprone country, offers the greatest potential for significant yield increases. It accounts for about 11 percent of total area planted, and 16 percent of total grain production. Cereals are the staple of the Malian diet and provide approximately 79 percent (1,770 kcal/year/individual) of the total human energy supply.3 Millet, sorghum, and maize account for about 85 percent of these cereal calories while rice provides the remaining 15 percent4 and accounts for about 6.4 percent of the total expenses of Malian households.5 According to Mali's most recent (1988-89) nationwide consumption expenditure survey,6 national rice consumption per capitaaverages about 34 kg per annum, and is higher in urban areas (58.0 kg/year) than in rural areas (24.3 SMALL-SCALE INLAND VALLEY SWAMP RICE PRODUCTION 191 kg/year). While rice is currently only third among cereals in terms of per capita consumption, Mali's strategic development plan7 projects that per capita rice consumption will increase at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in urban areas and 0.4 percent in...