Rural agriculture and adaptation strategies to the climate change in North Benin

The adaptation to hazards and the management of the risk are everywhere considered in the traditional land systems. As a matter of fact, the global climate change is locally manifested through the evolutions which modify the production conditions. The present study is about the understanding of the strategies developed by the producers in condition climate changes, of its visible effects in the agrarian landscape and the policies set up to face it. It is based on a sample of 270 producers in the different agri-ecological areas in North of Benin. The impact of climate change on agriculture is multiple and weighs on the people, the capital of exploitations of the results (stock rearing system and crops less productive). To face these impacts, the producers have set up adaptation systems. They begin modifying their cultural habits. In effect, the farmers change the ranges (search for periodicity as factor of adaptation to the reduction of pluviometry), even the cultivated species to prioritize the crops more hardy. The farming habits also progress as well on the level of achievement dates as on the techniques used (dropping out of the work of the soil in certain cases for example). The use of the means of production (work, inputs) is thought to take into account the risks: this is manifested in some cases through extensification, elsewhere through the concentration of the means on the "more plausible" spaces (concerning mainly the available water). Another way of adaptation explored by the producers is based on the development of new agricultural activities in order to try to distribute the risks and / or to adapt themselves to the new conditions of production: integration of new speculations, implantation of food crops by some cattle-breeders, practice of rearing used by farmers development of truck-farming and small rearing then the processing of the products.