2004 Annual Meeting - Abstract

Forgotten Crops: Production and Marketing of ‘Secondary" Food Crops in Mali

Dolores Koenig

Much of the policy-oriented work on African agriculture, whether by
economists, agronomists, or anthropologists, addresses either crops
produced for export (cotton, cocoa, etc.) or basic subsistence crops
linked to food security. At the policy level, structural adjustment and
more recent approaches have stressed the role of international trade in
providing a way for countries to raise their living standards.
Developing countries have stressed the importance of fair prices for
their export crops; in fact, cotton subsidies to farmers in developed
countries were a focus of developing country action at the recent WTO
talks. At the same time, in the drought-prone West African savanna, the
subject of food security is also quite important and has stimulated
substantial research on basic food grains. The two theoretical visions -
of fast food as the product of an expanding global political economy and
slow food with its emphasis on local cultural knowledge - suggest an
analogous dichotomy.

In contrast, this paper suggests that large parts of the food system are
forgotten because they don't fall at either end of the dichotomy. In
Mali, these include local foods for the growing urban domestic market,
for example, ingredients for the sauce that complements basic grains and
a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Very little of policy
relevance is known about these ‘secondary' foods. In a more academic
vein, there has been some work on periurban agriculture, market systems
(e.g., by Gracia Clark), and provisioning cities (e.g., by Jane Guyer),
but still not much. Why indeed is so little known about farmer decisions
in these matters or the specifics of distribution networks?

Using information on farm production from a 1999 study undertaken in
Kita, Mali, this paper will discuss the importance of ‘secondary' food
crops. Here, cotton was grown as a cash-crop for export, using global
technologies. At the same time farmers grew basic food grains, using
mostly local cultural knowledge. But alongside these crops, farmers grew
peanuts, watermelons, and mangoes. Farmers used ‘new' knowledge in the
cultivation of peanuts (selected seed varieties and seed disinfectants)
and mangoes (grafting), but there was very little organized government
support for these crops. Farmers got knowledge through locally based
networks; sales as well went through local intermediaries to Mali's
urban retail markets.

Many Kita farmers earned substantial sums from peanuts, while a few
earned as well from watermelons and mangoes. Farmers made decisions to
sell these crops based on price, the labor required, and cultural
traditions. Farmers could sell these crops at all levels of the market
chain (village markets, weekly markets, town markets), at any time of
the year, and receive varying prices according to quality and
value-added, in contrast to cotton, which was bought at one point in the
year by a parastatal monopsony at fixed prices. From the farmers'
viewpoint, secondary crops formed an important third leg to a
diversified livelihood system that included export and subsistence crops
as well.

Following discussion of the Kita material, I plan to integrate a
theoretical discussion of why these secondary crops have been forgotten.
On the ‘fast food' side, the emphasis on tradables and globalized
markets has turned attention away from domestic commercialization and
the changing structure of domestic economies. Yet these farmers do not
conform to ‘slow food' stereotypes either. The anthropological focus on
resistance to development has helped render invisible certain activities
like these. Far from refusing the state or development, farmers were
actively looking for ways to increase their access to market networks.