Development of sustainable production systems in food projects, Benin, Ghana, Togo
This report presents a study of the environmental assessment and development of sustainable production systems, carried out within the framework of food production support projects (or "food projects") in West Africa initiated by FARM in 2008. A detailed presentation of the projects is available on the FARM website: www.fondation-farm.org.
The aim of this initiative is to help African farmers and their professional organizations produce more and better market their crops to contribute to local and regional food security. With this in mind, the projects aim to facilitate access to means of production and the proper use of inputs, while respecting natural resources and the environment. Thus, FARM's support to farmers' groups mainly involves the creation of guarantee funds with banks and working capital for access to inputs, training and technical support, and monitoring and evaluation of the actions undertaken in this context.
An initial environmental assessment study was conducted in early 2009 on the first four food projects supported by FARM since 2008 in Mali and Burkina Faso. The foundation also extended its support to three additional farmers' organizations in 2009 in Ghana, Togo, and Benin. This study concerns these three projects launched in 2009 (see terms of reference in Appendix 1).
This report presents, in the first part, the context of intervention of the food projects supported by FARM in the three situations visited in June 2010 in Benin (Zou/Bohicon region), Togo (Savannes/Dapaong region) and Ghana (Centre-Nord/Tamale zone). The second part addresses the question of the sustainability of production systems seen from the angle of maintaining the productive capacities of cultivated environments (soil, grassland, water, etc.) and suggests ways of improvement. This is therefore a vision of sustainability restricted to agronomic and agro-environmental aspects. The third part deals with the current or possible future environmental impacts of the food projects supported by the FARM foundation. It makes proposals for the evaluation of certain environmental impacts based on the identification of a few indicators. The fourth part constitutes a synthetic presentation of the main recommendations made in parts 2 and 3.
A more detailed version of this report has been prepared for internal use by project monitoring bodies. The text proposed below reflects the key points of the initial report.
This report was written based on interviews conducted with the heads of the Food Projects and their partners, as well as with the farmers benefiting from these Projects. The producer partners, PO managers, and technicians from support structures made themselves available to explain their activities to me in detail and accompany me in the field, and I thank them all for this.
