Democracy and Development in Mali

Overview—MSU’s Food Security Research and Outreach Program in Mali

Overview-MSU's Food Security Research and Outreach Program in Mali JOHN M. STAATZ Origin of the Program I n 1985, the Department ofAgricultural Economics at MSU, in collaboration with Malian colleagues working in various ministries and research institutes , began a program of applied research and outreach focused on agricultural marketing reforms and on the potential roles for regional trade and cooperation in Mali's food security and economic growth strategies. The program also helped to strengthen Mali's public agricultural market information system and improve the strategic planning of agricultural research in the country.1 Analyzing the Market Reforms: The First Phase The food security research program in Mali began as an effort to provide a stronger empirical base for implementing and evaluating the cereals market reform program, known by its French acronym, PRMC (Programme de Restructuration du Marchi Cerealier).2 This program, officially launched in 1981, aimed at transforming Malian agricultural production and marketing by abolishing the official state monopoly on grain trading and doing away with official prices, thereby creating incentives for the private sector (including farmers) to expand investment in grain production and marketing. Supporters of the reforms argued that the program would unleash strong market incentives and transform grain farming into a commercial activity. Critics replied that most Malian farmers had little capacity, because ofpoor technology and erratic weather, to respond to the reforms and that the benefits of market liberalization would likely be captured by a few large merchants. Both sides were arguing on the basis of conventional wisdom(s) and ideology , but with very little empirical information to back up their arguments. 105 106 JOHN M. STAA12 The MSU research program aimed to fill this empirical void, by creating a system that could observe farmer and trader behavior at several levels of the production and marketing system in order to determine which actors had the capacity and the willingness to respond to the reforms by expanding production and investment. The first phase of the MSU work (1985-87) focused on the impact of the PRMC reforms in the southern "grain belt" of the country (the CMDT and OHV zones). The basic hypothesis was that the effects of the reforms would be most apparent in the grain-surplus producing zones of the country. Led by Josue Dione and Niama Nango Demb6Ie, two Malians who were pursuing graduate degrees at Michigan State, the research program was carried out jointly with the Commission Nationale d'EvaLuation et de Suivi de La Strategie Alimentaire (CESA). Dione's research focused on the food strategies of farmers in response to the reforms, while DembeIe's work focused on how traders, particularly cereals wholesalers, were responding to the changes brought about by the PRMC.3 Extending the Program The initial research findings quickly influenced the debates within the PRMC during 1986 and 1987 and created the demand for further research in order to extend the results both geographically and over time, to see how traders and farmers modified their strategies as production conditions varied in different agro-c1imatic zones and as rainfall changed from year to year. The research and outreach program that emerged focused on four themes: (a) the ongoing impacts of the cereal market reforms in the southern regions of the country; (b) alternative public- and private-sector roles in assuring food security, particularly in the chronically grain-deficit region of northeastern Mali (GaoTombouctou ); (c) access of farmers, traders, and consumers to market information; and (d) strengthening agricultural research by taking account of how interactions among policy reform, organization of the agricultural research system, and characteristics of the different technologies factors affect the payoffs to agronomic research. Market reform andfarmer strategies in southern Mali The continuation of the research on market reform in southern Mali, led in the late-1980s by Niama Nango Dembele, Philip Steffen, Victoire D'Agostino, Shelly Sundberg, and Mona Mehta, focused on how traders and farm households OVERVIEW 107 adapted their marketing and income strategies to cope with changing production conditions. These studies also examined the implications of these strategies for household food consumption and nutrition.4 During this period, market integration also increased, the organization of the grain trade evolved rapidly in response to the ongoing reforms,s and the MSU-CESA studies continued to feed those results into the policy debate.6 The researchers also evaluated the impact of PRMC measures aimed at strengthening the private sector's role in...