Who owns the plant biomass? Designing a process of co‐management of crop residues for cattle and soils in Sudano‐Sahelian Africa

Abstract

Communication du workshop WS2.4 – Family farming under pressure. Reassessing options for liveability and permanenceOver the past 30 years, the southern part of the Sudano‐Sahelian Africa, hosted a large population of farmers and Fulani herders in search of arable land and pastures. They have developed agricultural practices that maintain soil fertility through long fallow periods, and pastoral practices that allow the best exploitation of the feed distributed along the space during the time. But today, the high human pressure on resources and the global climatic change disturb this balance. The natural grazing land is cultivated by farmers in order to extend crop production; while the historical free grazing right of farmer’s crop residues by herds is now challenged. Competition, tensions and conflicts have become common for the utilization of crop residues in their natural state (cattle feeding or cropping systems based on mulch), or when they are recycled in manure. The challenge is to insure simultaneously the forage supply for herds, and the preservation of soil fertility. Participatory analysis of practices (approach of local knowledge and follow‐up of cropping and livestock systems), experiments and discussions with stakeholders have been carried out in the northern Cameroon (NC), south of Mali (SM) and west of Burkina Faso (WBF). The indicators of practices helped to design two innovative models of management of plant biomass. The first model explains the present and innovative process of production and of utilization of biomass according to the diversity of family farms. The second one focuses on the way the needs of stakeholders can be took into account to build the “win‐win” mechanisms of management and of sharing the biomass between farmers and herders on the territory