Will Africa's Green Revolution squeeze African family farmers to death? Lessons from small-scale high-cost rice production in the Senegal River Valley

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Much of the vast literature on the structural transformation of the Senegal River Valley is referenced in Koopman (2007, 2009 Koopman, J. 2009. Globalization, gender, and poverty in the Senegal River Valley. Feminist Economics, 15(3): 253–285. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). A fundamental resource is Crousse, Mathieu and Seck (1991) Crousse, B., Mathieu, P., and Seck, S.M., 1991. La vallée du fleuve Sénégal: Évaluations et perspectives d'une décennie d'aménagements (1980–1990). Paris: Karthala. [Google Scholar]. Adrian Adams (2000) Adams, A. 2000. Quel avenir pour la vallée?, Dakar: International Institute for Environment and Development. [Google Scholar] provides an excellent overview. One of Senegal's biggest rice importers has recently asserted that the 'total liberalization of the rice sector since 1995 has been extremely dangerous for Senegal' because, to keep prices to urban consumers affordable, the state has often had to subsidise imported rice, imperilling not only the state's finances, but the entire economy (Agence de Presse Sénégalaise 2012b). The CNCR, Conseil national de concertation et de coopération des ruraux (the National Council for Rural Peoples' Collaboration and Cooperation) is Senegal's largest peasants' federation (2.5 million members). CNCR makes biannual tours of all Senegal's agricultural regions to consult with members. The term Millennium Challenge Corporation is the name of the central US grant-making agency; the national branches are called Millennium Challenge Accounts, i.e. MCA-Sénégal. I cannot help but wonder why the current, very poor land users, pastoralists with customary land rights in the area, are being required to purchase land that has been allocated to the MCA-Mali without respect for their customary land rights, when the MCC is supposedly making a grant to the Malian government to develop this land. For the latest information on the extent of the land grab in Africa since 2006, see Grain (2012 Grain, 2012. Grain releases data set with over 400 global land grabs. Grain. 23 February. Available from: http://www.grain.org/fr/article/entries/4479 [Accessed 15 March 2012]. [Google Scholar]). See also the new Land Matrix global database, www.landportal.info/landmatrix.