Mécanisation et offre agricole dans le Sahel : une analyse de la fonction de profit des exploitations agricoles

Abstract

This paper uses farm-level survey data from Burkina Faso to estimate, using a profit function approach, the supply responsiveness of farm households to changes in prices and nonprice factors, for individual crops and aggregate output. The sample is stratified first by agroecological zone and then, with an endogenous partition, into animal traction and manual (hand-tool) households. Three main conclusions emerge. First, the results run counter to the common pessimism regarding Sahel agriculture's ability to respond to better incentives (such as those created by the recent devaluation of the franc CFA) -particularly for cash cropping. Second, aggregate output responds positively to increases in the price of currently commercialized crops (cotton and maize) among traction households in the zone with the most favorable agroclimate, the guinean zone -thus averting the fear that price increases only lead to crop mix shifts. Third, absolute levels of response for cash crops and for aggregate output are much higher where nonprice factors are propitious -specifically, in the favorable agroclimate and among animal traction households that use fertilizer. Supply response is more limited in less favorable agroclimates and among households limited to hand-tool technologies. The results underscore the greater flexibility of the animal traction farmers to respond to economic incentives for cotton and maize. Donor and government programs that promote animal traction and fertilizer adoption can -via agrarian capital formation -reduce structural constraints to farmer response to macro incentives.