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Small Farmer Credit and the Village Production Unit in Rural Mali

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

John Van Dusen Lewis
John Van Dusen Lewis*
Affiliation:
Howard University
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Extract

This paper reviews the appropriateness of a development intervention celebrated for its direct benefits to the rural poor: small farmer credit. It will focus on the degree of inappropriateness that results from a contradiction between the convenience of directing the credit to discrete compound units and the dependence of small farmers' success on the coordination of production activities among larger groupings. The case to be looked at is from the West African savannah of Central Mali.

The economic posture of Malian savannah farmers develops within the context of these larger groups of producers. Unlike peasant coalitions in Latin America (Ortiz, 1972), the Malian groupings have not arisen to provide mutual security by spreading market risk among a wider group. This occurs where peasants are dependent on returns from a commercial crop the demand for which leaves them uncertain about how much to produce at any given time. If this were the case, subsidized credit inasmuch as it improved the peasant's marketing options might be able to circumvent such coalitions in attracting the small farmer. But the Malian peasant's coalitions are organized to confront production rather than marketing constraints. As long as these production constraints remain, his loyalty will be to his coalitions rather than to a marketing opportunity should these conflict.

The Malian peasant is not limited by land scarcity in the amount he cultivates. Therefore, he is not dependent on income from commercial crops to buy food; he will increase cash crop production only when its marketing situation is stable. Dry season migrant labor opportunities have long been available to him as an alternative for raising money for the colonial and post-colonial head taxes. Migrant laborers come home to grow unmarketed, subsistence crops. The money uses of their labor are often better served elsewhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , December 1978 , pp. 29 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1978

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