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

are involved in all activities, but land preparation is the most important one, accounting for 42
percent of their labor input (see Table 4.1.82). This difference may be related to the fact that land
preparation is difficult work but easy to monitor and somewhat flexible in timing, all of which
make it suited for hired labor. Harvesting is more time-sensitive, and farmers may find it harder to
monitor the quality of the work of hired laborers.
Wages The average wage paid to hired labor is 901 FCFA/day, although there is
considerable regional variation. Wages are highest in the north, where average 1100-1200
FCFA/day and lowest in Atlantique, where they are just 532 FCFA/day. This is somewhat
expected given the higher incomes in Atlantique. One explanation is that hired labor in the north is
largely for cotton production so it tends to be concentrated in a few months of the year. In addition,
the low population density in the north may force employers to pay a premium to attract workers
from other areas.
Credit
Access to credit In this section, we examine access to credit, including loans received for
any purpose but excluding in-kind credit such as the provision of inputs on credit. Overall, about
34 percent of all small farmers in Bénin received a loan in the 12 months prior to the survey.
Roughly half of these received a loan from the formal sector (CLCAM or an NGO) and one half
from the informal sector (friends, family, and moneylenders). It is rare for households to obtain a
loan from formal and informal sources (see Table 4.1.83).
Access to credit varies significantly from one department to another. Credit appears to be most
available in Zou, where over half (63 percent) of the households received a loan. In Mono and
Ouémé, the proportion is at least a third, but in other departments less than 20 percent of farm
households received a loan (see Table 4.1.83).
Female-headed households appear to have somewhat better access to credit, mainly due to access to
formal-sector loans. This may be the result of programs to target credit at women, but it is difficult
to give too much weight to this conclusion given the small number of female-headed households
(39) in the sample (see Table 4.1.84).
The pattern by expenditure category is somewhat erratic. Households in the poorest expenditure
category had the least access to credit, but those in the second-poorest category had the best access.
Formal-sector credit was most common in the middle expenditure categories. Perhaps the poorest
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