Spatial Modeling of Origin-Destination flows of farmers in Senegal

Migration is not limited to international migration and a complete picture of the movements of actors in the agricultural sector could be insightful. The paper identifies the different patterns of internal migration of farmers across the different locations using a conventional spatial autoregressive interaction model and the most recent household survey in Senegal. Findings highlight the existence of spatial dependencies between flows. Poverty, unemployment, education and water access appear to be among the pull and push factors explaining farmers migrations. Climate variability, specifically the succession of bad rain-fed cropping seasons, is likely to compound the livelihood problems faced by farmers and push them to migrate, in a country where many farmers depend largely upon rain-fed agriculture and cattle-raising. This paper provides empirical evidence to deepen our understanding of the internal and in-migration of farmers. A clearer picture of the driving force of farmer´s migration would help policy makers to devise suitable strategies for sustainable national migration policies.