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

It is no more common among richer households than poorer households.
It is much more common among small farms than large, accounting for 15 percent of the
area in the smallest farms, but just 3 percent of the area in the largest.
The latter finding conforms to the usual pattern in which farm size is inversely related to land
productivity.
4.1.4 Allocation of time
Introduction
This section examines the allocation of time of members of farm households in Bénin. The
survey asked for the time spent on eight activities during a typical day during the rainy season and
the dry season. Separate questions are asked of an adult male and female, most commonly the
head of household and his wife. The results must be interpreted with some caution because of a
number of types of measurement error:
First, the selection of a “typical” day is difficult given that the allocation of time varies
from day to day within a season.
In addition, the respondent must recall the allocation of time during another season, several
months in the past.
And finally, farm families may not have access to clocks to accurately measure the time
spent on different activities, so the duration data are approximate.
Taking the average over men and women and over dry and rainy seasons, the most time-consuming
activities of small farmers in Bénin are personal time, including eating and sleeping (9 hours per
day), agricultural production (4.9 hours), leisure (3 hours), and non-agricultural work (2.6 hours).
It is interesting to note that the time spent on post-harvest activities and non-agricultural activities
(4.4 hours) is almost as much as the time spent on agricultural production (see Table 4.1.34).
Gender differences
The allocation of time differs sharply, however, between men and women. Men spend
more time on agricultural production, leisure, and personal time, while women spend more time on
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