Agriculture, Ecology and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Trajectories of Labour-Saving Technologies in Rural Benin (original) (raw)

The Environmental Crunch in Africa, 2018

Abstract

This study uses the perspectives of political ecology and of science and technology studies to highlight how socio-technological change over recent decades has influenced cultivation and livestock-keeping in northern Benin. The introduced agricultural technologies are negotiated and adapted in use to shift power relations to the benefit of some rural actors over others. Labour-saving technologies such as tractors and especially herbicides were traced and their effects analysed in the light of ongoing uses made by both smallholder farmers and pastoralists. Results show a renegotiation of herbicides from weeding technologies to weapons for contestation over land and natural resources. Herbicides allow farmers to expand their crop fields in a labour-constrained context and to lay claim on or maintain ownership of land. However, use of chemicals has reduced the extent of rangelands by polluting grazing lands and water resources and has increased farmer–herder conflicts. Many herders have left the region for neighbouring countries such as Togo and Ghana, with economic consequences because of decreased livestock and milk marketing. (167)

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