IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i18p7616-d414082.html

Diversity and Resilience to Socio-Ecological Changes of Smallholder Lagune Cattle Farming Systems of Benin

Author

Listed:
  • Maurice Cossi Ahozonlin

    (Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou 03 BP 2819, Benin)

  • Luc Hippolyte Dossa

    (Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou 03 BP 2819, Benin)

Abstract

The indigenous smallholder Lagune breed and the production systems in which it is embedded in Southern Benin have received very little research or policy attention. Consequently, very little information exists on the diversity of these production systems or on their capacity to adapt to ongoing socio-economic and environmental changes. This study aimed to explore and characterize the diversity of Lagune cattle production systems along with farmers’ local knowledge and resilience strategies. A questionnaire was administered to 417 Lagune cattle farmers across two agro-ecological zones: Ouémé Valley (OVZ) and Pobe (PZ). It included, inter alia, questions related to households’ socio-economic conditions, their cattle herd characteristics, and management practices. Categorical principal component analysis and the two-step clustering method were used to classify the production systems which were then compared using the chi-square and ANOVA procedures. Four distinct farm types were identified. This study revealed the important role of agroecology in the diversity of farmers’ breeding practices. Controlled mating was more common in tethering systems whereas uncontrolled mating, widespread in free-roaming systems, has favored Lagune breed admixture with zebus. Opportunities for conserving the genetic diversity within the Lagune breed might be greater in PZ where breed admixture was almost inexistent.

Suggested Citation

  • Maurice Cossi Ahozonlin & Luc Hippolyte Dossa, 2020. "Diversity and Resilience to Socio-Ecological Changes of Smallholder Lagune Cattle Farming Systems of Benin," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-19, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:18:p:7616-:d:414082
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/18/7616/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/18/7616/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin, Guillaume & Barth, Kerstin & Benoit, Marc & Brock, Christopher & Destruel, Marie & Dumont, Bertrand & Grillot, Myriam & Hübner, Severin & Magne, Marie-Angélina & Moerman, Marie & Mosnier, Clai, 2020. "Potential of multi-species livestock farming to improve the sustainability of livestock farms: A review," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    2. Jan Douwe Van der Ploeg & Marjolein Visser, 2019. "The economic potential of agroecology: Empirical evidence from Europe," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/289295, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Rodriguez, D & de Voil, P & Rufino, MC & Odendo, M & van Wijk, MT, 2017. "To mulch or to munch? Big modelling of big data," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 32-42.
    4. David Berthier & Moana Peylhard & Guiguigbaza-Kossigan Dayo & Laurence Flori & Souleymane Sylla & Seydou Bolly & Hassane Sakande & Isabelle Chantal & Sophie Thevenon, 2015. "A Comparison of Phenotypic Traits Related to Trypanotolerance in Five West African Cattle Breeds Highlights the Value of Shorthorn Taurine Breeds," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-21, May.
    5. Roxburgh, Caspar W. & Rodriguez, Daniel, 2016. "Ex-ante analysis of opportunities for the sustainable intensification of maize production in Mozambique," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 9-22.
    6. Houessou, Sandrine O. & Dossa, Luc Hippolyte & Diogo, Rodrigue V.C. & Houinato, Marcel & Buerkert, Andreas & Schlecht, Eva, 2019. "Change and continuity in traditional cattle farming systems of West African Coast countries: A case study from Benin," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 112-122.
    7. Jabbar, M. A. & Diedhiou, M. L., 2003. "Does breed matter to cattle farmers and buyers?: Evidence from West Africa," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 461-472, July.
    8. Ahozonlin, Maurice Cossi & Koura, Ivan Bossima & Dossa, Luc Hippolyte, 2019. "Determinants of Crossbreeding Practices by Cattle Farmers in South Benin, West Africa: Implications for the Sustainable Use of the Indigenous Lagune Cattle Population," Sustainable Agriculture Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 8(2).
    9. Meuwissen, Miranda P.M. & Feindt, Peter H. & Spiegel, Alisa & Termeer, Catrien J.A.M. & Mathijs, Erik & de Mey, Yann & Finger, Robert & Balmann, Alfons & Wauters, Erwin & Urquhart, Julie & Vigani, Mau, 2019. "A framework to assess the resilience of farming systems," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 176, pages 1-10.
    10. Seo, S. Niggol, 2011. "Is an integrated farm more resilient against climate change? A micro-econometric analysis of portfolio diversification in African agriculture: Reply," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 450-451, June.
    11. Stefan Dercon, 2002. "Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 17(2), pages 141-166, September.
    12. Adam Drucker, 2007. "Measuring Heterogeneous Preferences for Cattle Traits among Cattle-Keeping Households in East Africa," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(4), pages 1005-1019.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sèyi Fridaïus Ulrich Vanvanhossou & Luc Hippolyte Dossa & Sven König, 2021. "Sustainable Management of Animal Genetic Resources to Improve Low-Input Livestock Production: Insights into Local Beninese Cattle Populations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-20, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Houessou, Sandrine O. & Dossa, Luc Hippolyte & Diogo, Rodrigue V.C. & Houinato, Marcel & Buerkert, Andreas & Schlecht, Eva, 2019. "Change and continuity in traditional cattle farming systems of West African Coast countries: A case study from Benin," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 112-122.
    2. Sèyi Fridaïus Ulrich Vanvanhossou & Luc Hippolyte Dossa & Sven König, 2021. "Sustainable Management of Animal Genetic Resources to Improve Low-Input Livestock Production: Insights into Local Beninese Cattle Populations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-20, September.
    3. Pascal Genest-Richard & Caroline Halde & Patrick Mundler & Nicolas Devillers, 2025. "A Promising Niche: Current State of Knowledge on the Agroecological Contribution of Alternative Livestock Farming Practices," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-31, January.
    4. Girma Kassie & Awudu Abdulai & Clemens Wollny, 2011. "Heteroscedastic hedonic price model for cattle in the rural markets of central Ethiopia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(24), pages 3459-3464.
    5. Zander, Kerstin K. & Signorello, Giovanni & De Salvo, Maria & Gandini, Gustavo & Drucker, Adam G., 2013. "Assessing the total economic value of threatened livestock breeds in Italy: Implications for conservation policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 219-229.
    6. Blazquez-Soriano, Amparo & Ramos-Sandoval, Rosmery, 2022. "Information transfer as a tool to improve the resilience of farmers against the effects of climate change: The case of the Peruvian National Agrarian Innovation System," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    7. Mahmud, Mahreen & Riley, Emma, 2021. "Household response to an extreme shock: Evidence on the immediate impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on economic outcomes and well-being in rural Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    8. Alejandro de la Fuente & Eduardo Ortiz-Juárez & Carlos Rodríguez-Castelán, 2018. "Living on the edge: vulnerability to poverty and public transfers in Mexico," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(1), pages 10-27, January.
    9. Godfred Addai & Jungho Suh & Douglas Bardsley & Guy Robinson & Lawrence Guodaar, 2024. "Exploring sustainable development within rural regions in Ghana: A rural web approach," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(4), pages 3890-3907, August.
    10. Carol Newman & Finn Tarp, 2018. "Risk and investment: Evidence from rural Vietnam," WIDER Working Paper Series 122, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Renata Baborska & Emilio Hernandez & Emiliano Magrini & Cristian Morales-Opazo, 2020. "The impact of financial inclusion on rural food security experience: A perspective from low-and middle-income countries," Review of Development Finance Journal, Chartered Institute of Development Finance, vol. 10(2), pages 1-18.
    12. Richard Kwabena Nkrumah & Samuel Kobina Annim & Benedict Afful, 2021. "Household Social Expenditure in Ghana: Examining the Ex-Post Effects and Vulnerability to Poverty," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-15, January.
    13. Sékou Amadou Traoré & Christoph Reiber & Bekele Megersa & Anne Valle Zárate, 2018. "Contribution of cattle of different breeds to household food security in southern Mali," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 10(3), pages 549-560, June.
    14. Arun, Thankom Gopinath & Bendig, Mirko, 2010. "Risk Management among the Poor: The Case of Microfinancial Services," IZA Discussion Papers 5174, IZA Network @ LISER.
    15. Mariapia MENDOLA, 2005. "Farm households production theories: a review of institutional and behavioural responses," Departmental Working Papers 2005-01, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    16. Karol Pogorzelski, 2014. "Agricultural Development and Structural Change," IBS Policy Papers 5/2014, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    17. Daniele, Bertolozzi-Caredio & Barbara, Soriano & Isabel, Bardaji & Alberto, Garrido, 2022. "Analysis of perceived robustness, adaptability and transformability of Spanish extensive livestock farms under alternative challenging scenarios," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    18. Yan, Zhen & Zhou, Jie-hong, 2015. "Measuring consumer heterogeneous preferences for pork traits under media reports: choice experiment in sixteen traceability pilot cities, China," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211884, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. Sarah Xue Dong, 2017. "The differential impact of economic crisis on men and women, and its connection to intra-household bargaining," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-134, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Antonio Zavala-Alcívar & María-José Verdecho & Juan-José Alfaro-Saiz, 2020. "A Conceptual Framework to Manage Resilience and Increase Sustainability in the Supply Chain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-38, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:18:p:7616-:d:414082. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.