UNVEILING THE RESILIENCE OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS IN SENEGAL AMIDST EXTREME CLIMATE CONDITIONS

Agriculture plays a critical role in the livelihoods of Senegal’s population. However, due to a lack of resources in the agricultural sector, production is significantly affected by extreme climate events such as floods, droughts, and heat waves. This study aims to present a novel resilience approach for assessing various agricultural interventions. We characterize the resilience approach as one that fulfills nutritional requirements affordably and reduces risks for the farmer. The focus is on smallholder farmers in the Groundnut Basin of Senegal who engage in mixed farming, producing both millet and groundnut crops while also raising livestock, especially in the face of extreme drought conditions. The proposed approach is holistic as it requires considering demographics, economics, consumption behavior, and farm operations for smallholder farmers. This information was originally collected across government and non-government organizations reports, scientific papers, organization databases, and surveys. The proposed interventions consider the impacts of three planting dates, three plant densities, and six nitrogen (N) fertilizer rates on pearl millet crop yield in extreme drought conditions. The impacts of these interventions were evaluated within mixed farming. Initially, a multi-objective optimization was employed to meet nutritional needs while maintaining a healthy diet at the lowest cost. The interventions that met the nutritional requirement thresholds were then evaluated against several economic indicators. At the last stage, the economically viable options were ranked based on the risk tolerance level of farmers. The study concludes N fertilizer rates of 0, 20, and 100 kg N ha-1 were generally economically not feasible. Additionally, medium and late planting dates generally performed better than early planting dates, while plant densities of 3.3 and 6.6 pl m-2 performed better than 1.1. The robust resilience metric introduced in this study is easily transferable to farmers with different characteristics in other regions.