Effective food security work in developing countries, such as Mali, relies on a thorough understanding of the rural farming system. A common approach is to study land allocation decisions to specific crops. In accomplishing this, one challenge is to model all production outcomes in a multi-crop system. This thesis attempts to overcome this challenge in order to study the determinants of how much of a household's cultivated land it allocates to cotton, maize, sorghum, millet, and secondary crops. First, incorporating insights gained by the author while serving as Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, the agricultural household model helps to identify factors that explain land allocation to various crops. This framework is applied to survey data from seven villages in Mali's Koutiala production zone. A fractional multinomial logit econometric model is used to estimate the effect of household and production attributes on shares of cotton, maize, sorghum, millet, and secondary crops simultaneously, the results of which are presented as average marginal effects. Among other results, the analysis shows that ethnic groups not native to the Koutiala area are associated with significantly smaller shares of maize, and that villages with better market access are correlated with much higher shares of millet and smaller shares of maize, sorghum, and especially cotton. These results, along with personal experience, inform recommendations for policymakers, such as the need to reduce transaction costs for coarse grain markets, promote maize and secondary crops as nutritious and marketable goods, and remain mindful of remote villages during the restructuring of Mali's cotton industry.
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