Diversity of cattle production in Northwestern Bénin[Diversité de la production bovine au nord-ouest du Bénin]

Pastoral mobility in protected ecosystems of Sudanian and Sudano-Sahelian Africa has favoured seasonal load transfer from Sahelian countries to southern regions. These seasonal movements that have evolved into pastoral migrations have made the Donga Basin in Northwestern Bénin an attraction area of international importance for cattle breeding. But with the tightening of forest policy and the intensification of forest monitoring, this pastoral mobility has been regulated by bilateral and community agreements. The consequences of this change have resulted in varied lifestyles and production patterns, based on very diverse combinations of extensive rain-fed agriculture and mixed-type farming. In this joint evolution of land and agricultural land, the typology of farms appears as an indispensable tool to characterize the diversity of production systems in a changing environment. The construction of the typology of farms in the Donga Basin is carried out first by a method of "expert says", then deepened by an analytical and statistical analysis of the database from field surveys conducted in 2010 and which covered 254 families, of which 48 reported farming. The criteria used were social (ethnicity, age, seniority in the community and land status), but also of a technical nature (type of route, water points used, labour force, size of flock, milking of milk). This qualitative and quantitative approach has made it possible to distinguish nine categories of livestock farms (autochthonous, transhumant, immigrants, peri-urban, entrusted, hut, fattening, traction and transit), grouped into -i- the semi-sedentary system, - ii- the mobile system and -iii- the opportunistic system, three types of systems. The major difference between these three systems resided not only in their practice (mobility, browsing and inputs), but also in their numerical weight on the local herd (49% for the semi-sedentary system, 43% for the mobile system and 8% for the opportunist). From a performance point of view, the mobile system had a better digital performance, which was 11%, compared to 7% in the semi-sedentary system. On the other hand, the opportunistic system, which was not a breeder system, simply values products from the other two breeder systems. The distribution of cattle breeding into three systems is quite expressive knowing that the villages are suitable for the semi-sedentary and mobile systems while the realities of the city are suitable for the opportunistic system.