The secret is in the sauce: foraged food and dietary diversity among female farmers in southwestern Burkina Faso

ABSTRACT

In Burkina Faso, New Green Revolution projects have focused on increasing and commercialising agricultural output to ameliorate poor nutrition, but have been blind to foraging as an important source of micronutrients and dietary diversity. We seek to understand: if foraged foods collected and consumed by female farmers are associated with positive measures of food access; and if a rice commercialisation project is impacting foraging practices. Results (based on interviews regarding foraging and food access with 145 female rice farmers) suggest that foraged foods play a large role in daily diets and that rice projects have no effect on foraging.

RÉSUMÉ

Au Burkina Faso, des projets menés dans le cadre de la nouvelle révolution verte ont mis l’accent sur l’augmentation et la commercialisation de la production agricole pour améliorer la mauvaise nutrition, mais sans prendre en considération les aliments fourragers en tant que source importante de micronutriments et de diversité alimentaire. Nous cherchons à comprendre, d’une part, si les aliments fourragers récoltés et consommés par les agricultrices sont associés à des mesures positives d’accès à l’alimentation; et, d’autre part, si un projet de commercialisation du riz a une incidence sur les pratiques de récolte d’aliments fourragers. Les résultats (basés sur des entretiens menés avec 145 productrices de riz au sujet de la récolte d’aliments fourragers et l’accès à la nourriture) démontrent que les aliments fourragers jouent un grand rôle dans l’alimentation quotidienne et que les projets liés au riz n’ont aucun effet sur la récolte d’aliments fourragers.

KEYWORDS:

• Dietary diversity
• food security
• foraging
• New Green Revolution
• nutrition

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the co-principal investigators: Rachel Schurman (University of Minnesota), Thomas Bassett (University of Illinois), William Munro (Illinois Wesleyan University) and Heidi Gengenbach (University of Massachusetts Boston). The authors acknowledge the Burkina Faso National Institute for the Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA), and especially agro-economist Adema Ouedrago for helping them identify research sites and coordinate household surveys. Last but not least, the authors we express our gratitude to four Burkinabe research assistants: Melanie Ouedrago, Eveline Héma, Yacouba Zi and Salimata Traore, as well as to Dr. Kelsey McDonald for reviewing a draft of this article.

Notes on contributors

Julia D. Morgan is a Data Analyst at Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington. She graduated from Macalester College in 2017 with a major in geography and a minor in biology. Her senior honours thesis was on foraging and food security in Southwestern Burkina Faso.

William G. Moseley is a Professor of Geography, and Director of the Program for Food, Agriculture and Society, at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN USA. His research interests include political ecology, tropical agriculture, food security, development and Africa.

Notes

1 Food access, conceptualised by Sen (1981) as entitlements, is about people's ability to access food via their own production or foraging, purchase with sufficient income, or gifts from family and friends. It is different than the amount of food available on markets which may be inaccessible to the poorest of the poor.

2 This research was approved by the Macalester College Institutional Review board: MIRB15-19: “Collaborative Research: Assessing the New Green Revolution for Africa”. This research was also conducted under a research permit granted by the Government of Burkina Faso and in collaboration with National Institute of the Environment and Agricultural Research (Institut Nationale de l’Environnement ed de Recherche Agricole), permit # 2017-0178.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, grant #1539833 and the Womadix Fund.