Global IssuesMALI: Cotton and Food Security Closely Linked
Many Malian farmers are boycotting cotton this year, instead planting cereals. Cotton isn't edible, but observers say that the shift could weaken food security.
Discouraged by falling prices for cotton, and poor administration at the state-owned Malian Textile Company (known by its French acronym, CDMT), many Malian farmers are reducing the area planted with cotton on their farms - or abandoning growing it altogether.
In the village of Sanakoroba, 30 kilometres outside the capital, Bamako, Abdoulaye Sériba Traoré, president of the local farmers' association, is one of the few who is still growing cotton. 'People are boycotting cotton because they don't receive their money on time. I only received payment for my 2009 harvest late in 2010. I was very disappointed, to the point that I didn't want to plant my field,' he told IPS, putting his receipts for 2009 at $1,400.
The CDMT purchases the bulk of raw cotton from farmers but the company routinely makes farmers wait many months between collecting their harvest and paying them for it.
Traoré, who was one of the first to introduce cotton farming in his area is not discouraged. 'Of course, because of the difficulties linked to the sale of cotton, I reduced the amount of space i devoted to it.'
Cotton is an important agricultural product for Malian farmers in the 130,000 square kilometre zone that extends from just south of the Niger River across the south and west of the country. Roughly one quarter of the country's population lives in this region, and the farmers plant cotton alongside maize, millet, sorghum and rice, as well as groundnuts and black-eyed peas - known locally as niébé.
Farmers here say that growing cotton helps them to increase their production of other crops.
'Growing cotton enriches the soil, because when you grow cotton, you get fertiliser and other agricultural inputs on credit. Thanks to crop rotation, the cereals also benefit from rich soils,' said Sail Samaké, a farmer in the southern village of Djitoumou Tamala.
Banks are not willing to lend farmers money for fertiliser and other agricultural inputs for cereals, thus binding food security closely to production of an inedible cash crop, cotton.
Strong prices for cotton between 2003 and 2006 were kind to the region's farmers, and food production boomed as well. Some 1.4 million tonnes of cereal crops are harvested in the cotton-producing region. The profits from cotton have also permitted the gradual accumulation of large numbers of cattle - farmers in this region have a herd of around 2.2 million head.
But as cotton prices on the world market have tumbled - thanks to subsidies for U.S. cotton farmers, according to analyst Mohamed Tabouré - Mali has witnessed a decline in its domestic production.
National production of cotton has fallen dramatically from around 620,000 tonnes in 2003-2004, to 200,000 tonnes in the growing season that ended in 2009.
'We should note that [declining production] is linked to both the fall in the value of the dollar against the euro as well as the CFA franc, and the increasing phenomenon of degradation of soil and loss of fertility is leading to reduced yields in the fields,' Tabouré told IPS.
With farmers reluctant to plant cotton, their source of credit for fertiliser is limited, putting food security at risk. To avoid this, the Malian government has introduced subsidies for agricultural inputs.
The price paid per kilo of cotton has rallied in the past year; if this continues, this may also encourage more farmers to return to growing cotton. Improved managment of the Mali Textile Company will be vital if the country is to regain the level of cotton production it enjoyed in the early part of the last decade - and the bolstered food security that came with it.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service