Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

Village leaders were asked to identify the number of different types of extension agents that operate
in their villages. Each village has, on average, 0.8 extension agents from CARDER, 0.3 from an
NGO project, and a small number of private extension agents. The number of all three types of
agents is somewhat higher in the North (see Table 4.2.27). These results reinforce the findings
from the IFPRI-LARES Small Farmer Survey that farmers in Bénin have relatively little contact
with extension agents. In that survey, barely 20 percent of the farmers had had contact with an
extension agent over the 12 months prior to the interview.
The Community Survey indicates that the number of CARDER extension agents has fallen in more
than one-third (35 percent) of the villages and has increased in just 4 percent of them. In the
remaining 61 percent of the villages, the number of CARDER agents has not changed.
Furthermore, it does appear that the number of extension agents hired by NGOs and private
companies has increased to compensate for the loss of CARDER agents (see Table 4.2.28).
If we examine the change in the total number of extension agents by region, it is clear that the
reduced staffing at CARDER is a national, not a regional, trend. In each of the three regions, many
more village report a decline in the number of agents than report an increase. The most negative
responses were from the Center, where none of the village leaders perceived an increase in agents
and close to half (47 percent) reported a decrease. The only positive aspect of these results is that in
each region 50-60 percent report that there has been no change in the number of extension agents
serving the village.
4.2.7 Agricultural production and marketing
The last section of the IFPRI-LARES Community Survey focused on the area planted to major
crops, crop yields, the net position (deficit or surplus) in each crop, and the production trends 26 .
The results in this section should be treated with some caution because they are based on the views
of the village leader. In some cases, these leaders have access to official production figures and
their estimates may be quite reliable. In other cases, they may be little more than educated guesses.
For example, 10 percent of the village leader were not able (or were not willing) to provide
26
The Community Survey also collected village-level estimates of the area allocated to each crop.
These results are not presented for two reasons. First, about 10 percent of the village leaders were not able to
provide any information, and some of the information provided the other village leaders seems questionable.
Second, more reliable information on area allocation is available from national statistics, making these results
less useful.
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