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PhD defense Arouna Dissa

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February 21, 2023

Last Tuesday, February 14, Arouna Dissa succesfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Expanding the adaptive capacity of cotton-producing smallholders to cope with (un)expeted climate and market variability in souther Mali". Interested to read more, please find Arouna's thesis through this link.

Summary

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa depend on agriculture to sustain their livelihoods, but they are facing challenges to raise their low productivity due to resource degradation, limited access to fertilizer and land, and unexpected variation in weather and economic conditions. The seasonal nature of agricultural production further challenges smallholders’ farm management to sustain their livelihoods. Farmers are diverse in terms of resource endowments, objectives, and adaptive capacity with implications on their ability to respond to the challenges. This research was done in southern Mali to understand and support the ability of smallholders to cope with variation in weather and economic conditions to sustain their livelihoods. I found that farmers produced cotton and cereals for several reasons, including to diversify the sources and timing of income, to secure access to credit and agrochemicals and to strike a balance between the security and flexibility. Farms of different resources were equally exposed to weather change, but with different sensitivity and adaptive capacity. A “cotton crisis” induced by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in large reduction of cotton area with limited access to fertilizer inputs without negative effect on the yields of cereals and food self-sufficiency, with different implications for farms of different resources. Lastly, I developed a farm management approach and a support tool for informed decision-making to cope with unanticipated circumstances.

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