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

In the case of manioc, most of the villages in the South and almost half of those in the
Center have surpluses, while most of those in the North have deficits.
Yams follows the reverse pattern. A large minority (41 percent) of the villages in the North
have surpluses, while almost all those in the South (92 percent) have deficits.
It is important not to conclude from this summary that each commodity flows either north or south.
Even in the production regions of each crop, there are significant numbers of villages in deficit. In
the North, for example, 63 percent of the villages have rice deficits, 26 percent have sorghum/millet
deficits, and 16 percent have yam deficits. Similarly, although manioc production is centered in the
South, 15 percent of the villages there have deficits in this crop. These results highlight the
complexity of the marketing channels that match surpluses in one area with deficits in another.
Production trends
Village leaders were asked whether the output of each crop had increased or decreased
since 1992. For almost every commodity, the number of village reporting increased output exceeds
the number reporting decreased output. The only exception was sorghum/millet, for which roughly
equal numbers of villages reported increases and decreases. The commodities with the largest
number of villages reporting higher output are maize and manioc. Close to two-thirds of the
villages in Bénin reported that output of these two crops had increased since 1992 (see Table
4.2.34).
Looking at the regional patterns, it is clear that village leaders in the North are much more likely to
report increased output than those in the Center and South. At least three-quarters of the villages in
the North report expanded output of cotton, maize, and yams. Over half of them report higher
production of rice, sorghum/millet, beans, and groundnuts. In contrast, there are only two
commodities for which a majority of villages in the Center report production growth: cotton and
maize. Similarly, in the South only two commodities are reported to have expanded in more than
half the villages: maize and manioc (see Table 4.2.35).
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