What is the nature of the GR4A rice value chain in Burkina Faso?

The GR4A value chain model calls for building linear connections between input providers, producers, agro-processors, and consumers, as a means of integrating farmers into markets, creating added value, fostering rural development, and building food and nutrition security. Unlike value chain projects in other parts of Africa (e.g. Bassett, Koné, & Pavlovic Reference Bassett, Koné and Pavlovic2018; Gengenbach Reference Gengenbach2019), the GR4A rice value chain project in Burkina Faso is primarily an import substitution effort, aiming to make Burkina Faso more self-sufficient with regard to rice production and less dependent on imports. Developing a capacity to export is not a part of the game plan and is even viewed as undesirable.

After undertaking market surveys in 2015 to determine the types of rice varieties and characteristics preferred by Burkinabe urban consumers (which is a critical step if locally produced rice is to supplant imported rice), the project began to actively build links between plant breeders, seed companies, herbicide dealers, agroprocessors (mainly millers and parboilers), and farmers. Even before the launching of the rice commercialization project that is the focus of this study, AGRA trained and supported plant breeders who work for the state agricultural research institute. These plant breeders now are tasked with creating improved seeds that will produce rice with qualities that correspond to the characteristics consumers identified in the project’s market research. These improved seeds are sold to private seed companies that work with a network of approved outgrowers to replicate the seed. Examples of these private Burkinabe companies include Neema Agricole du Faso SA (NAFASO) and Faso Agriculture (FAGRI). This certified seed is then either sold directly to farmers via local kiosks, or to agrodealers or agroprcessors who sell the seeds to the farmers (often on credit). Agrodealers and millers may also acquire other inputs (such as fertilizers and herbicides) and sell these to farmers. After the harvest, farmers are supposed to sell their rice to the millers and parboilers for processing (oftentimes on contract). The finished product is packaged and sold to retailers, which then sell the finished product to the public.

We present here five brief examples of actors who hold different positions in the GR4A rice value chain in Burkina Faso. Of note are the different levels of risk they are taking on, their varying levels of support from AGRA, and their relative power within the value chain. These examples are meant to be representative of the situations we encountered among a broader group at each level of the value chain. First, a plant breeder we interviewed had his graduate education funded by AGRA, as well as his ongoing rice seed development research with the state agricultural research institute. He knew most of the other actors in the value chain and was well networked with other AGRA grantees in Burkina Faso as well as in other African countries. His relative power lay in his ability to push out new seeds with certain specified characteristics. Second, NAFASO is a private seed company which began operating in 2008. The company was AGRA’s first grantee in Burkina Faso, and today it is a major private sector actor in the country and regionally. It oversees 1000 outgrowers who produce certified seed for local farmers and for export. While this was not always the case, the company’s financial position is now very solid, and its size means that it has a fair degree of power in the local as well as the regional seed markets. The company’s CEO is well networked with other AGRA grantees in and outside the country. Third, we looked at the herbicide industry, which has flourished at the village level in Burkina Faso as prices have dropped and farmers search for labor-saving technologies. We spoke with several village-level herbicide merchants (often farmers who sell herbicides on the side) who had entered the business in the last two or three years. We also spoke with an agrodealer who is importing pesticides into the country. He confirmed that demand for his product has skyrocketed. Unlike improved seeds, the proliferation of herbicide use is not dependent on the active support of AGRA.

The last two actors we cite as examples have somewhat more risk than the others. First, Mr Ouedraogo (not his real name) is a rice miller in the city of Bama just north of Bobo Dioulasso. He is a retired civil servant who has invested his life savings in his milling business. While he has benefitted from AGRA training, he has not received grant support from AGRA. He sources 1300 tonnes of paddy rice from fifteen farmer cooperatives for milling. He advances seeds and inputs to the farmers, who then sell their output to him. He is nervous about the financial risk (having invested heavily in a new building and machines) as well about having a consistent supply of quality rice. Second, Fatimata (not her real name) is a female rice farmer in a village supported by the project. Last year, she had a moderately successful harvest using improved seeds and inputs on her one quarter-ha plot. When the contracted rice miller came to town to purchase their harvest, he let them know that he could not pay them immediately but would have their money in two weeks’ time. With mounting debts and the need to pay school fees for her son, Fatimata opted to sell her rice to a local trader who could pay immediately but at a lower price. She feels frustrated with the project, and the project is annoyed with her and other women in her village who opted to go outside of the pre-ordained value chain. The power of Fatimata and other women in her village is to vote with their feet if the AGRA rice value chain is not working to their advantage.

As seen in the examples above, several of the actors we interviewed in the rice value chain (including plant breeders, seed company representatives, herbicide dealers, and agro-processors) had been trained by and/or received grants from AGRA. For example, even private seed companies, such as NAFASO and FAGRI, are indebted to AGRA for critical grants in the early stages of their development. As a result of this support, these actors were well networked among each other in Burkina Faso and with individuals in similar industries outside of the country (whom, with AGRA support, they often met and exchanged ideas with at international conferences). By dint of their high levels of education and their ability to birth new seed technologies, plant breeders seemed to play an outsized role in these assemblages. This dense AGRA-supported network has the effect of building and sustaining an epistemic community of individuals with a similar focus who support one another and influence agricultural and food security policy within the country. Several of the actors we interviewed in the value chain were highly enthusiastic about their work and were often effusive about the possibilities for improved seed and inputs to improve the entire rice production system.

Interestingly, few of the actors we interviewed used the French equivalent of “New Green Revolution for Africa” to describe the broader intellectual project with which they were engaged. In contrast, the term value chain, chaine de valeur in French, was used more frequently by our interviewees to describe what they were trying to build. We are not sure why this is, but the resemblance of the value chain language to the concept of a filière (a French term, translated as thread), long used to organize work on certain commodity crops in Burkina Faso and across Francophone West Africa, may explain a preference for this conceptual nomenclature (Raikes, Jensen, & Ponte Reference Raikes, Jensen and Ponte2000). In fact, one informant described the value chain idea as filière plus the private sector.

While free market thinking suggests that private sector actors will self-assemble in value chains to provide services and products, this is not happening in Burkina Faso with the rice value chain. Overcoming financial risk is a major concern of some private sector actors. This means that the state and the donors must actively support private sector actors and entice them with financial support to participate in the rice value chains. As noted in the examples above, one major exception to this generalization is herbicide dealers of all sizes, who are flourishing and who mostly have limited contact with AGRA. Interestingly, AGRA’s mitigation of risk is primarily aimed at actors higher up the value chain than for some millers and most farmers at the bottom. It is hard to know why this is, but it may be based on a belief that if you build the right chain, then farmers will naturally follow.

Unlike other GR4A value chain initiatives that target regional markets (such as cassava from Mozambique) or global markets (such as cashews from Côte d’Ivoire), Burkina Faso’s rice initiative is squarely focused on import substitution and boosting rice self-sufficiency within the country. What this means, then, is that the project must build a local market for Burkina rice, actively competing with imported rice from Asia, which is preferred by urban consumers because of price and specific attributes. This effort includes a local advertising campaign (see Figure 3, which features a roadside billboard encouraging consumers to eat local rice from Burkina Faso). The drive to build a market also requires that those who are running the project be hyper-vigilant with regard to quality, and consistent use of certified seed is the cornerstone of the effort. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is difficult to find Burkina rice in most local shops in urban areas. Shopkeepers report that Burkina customers are not interested in local rice, although this may be due to the reputation of local rice predating the AGRA initiative. Interestingly, Malians seem to appreciate Burkina rice more than the Burkinabe.Footnote ² Key informants reported that Malian rice traders come into Bama (the major rice growing area north of Bobo Dioulasso) to buy up rice and take it back to Mali. Interestingly, project representatives found this phenomenon irritating, because they thought it detracted from their efforts to make the country more self-sufficient in rice production (although others might suggest that this is not necessarily a problem if it boosts regional rice self-sufficiency). Parboiled Burkina rice, however, does seem to sell better to locals than other types of Burkina rice. Women’s groups have formed themselves into cooperatives to produce this product, often investing in buildings and equipment, in order to supply this market. Parboiling locks in certain nutrients and allows the rice to last longer and cook more quickly, all of which is appealing to customers. In sum, the market for locally produced rice in towns and urban areas is not great (Burkina rice accounts for 30 percent of rice consumed in the country), with the exception of parboiled rice. It could be that the market for Burkina rice is at an inflection point, but as of the rainy season of 2019, developing a robust market for the product still seemed some distance away.

Figure 3.

Roadside billboard encouraging consumers to eat local rice from Burkina Faso. Source: author

To what degree does a GR4A Project impact the food security and dietary diversity of participating women?

We first examine the mechanics of the project, followed by an examination of its impacts on food security and nutrition. At the ground level, the idea was that agroprocessors and agrodealers would interact directly with rice farmers, who would grow the desired rice varieties. In some cases, the project works with rice farmers in irrigation schemes that have the ability to fully control water flow. In other cases, they work with farmers in wetland areas that only have partial control of water flow. This latter type of arrangement is commonly referred to as improved wetlands (or “bas fonds amenegés” in French). Within the study area, improvements were made to seasonal wetlands by one of two groups, either the Rainfed Rice Program (Programme Riz Pluvial [PRP]), supported by the Government of Taiwan, or the Agricultural Productivity and Food Security Project (Projet d’amélioration de la productivité agricole et de la sécurité alimentaire [PAPSA]), supported by the World Bank. In either case, the projects take an existing seasonal wetland used for traditional rice production, level it, divide it into quarter-hectare plots, and then build small water-control dikes with the help of village labor. These plots are then distributed among community members, of which roughly a third are women.

In terms of impact on household food security (using the HFIAS scale) and household and women’s dietary diversity (using HDDS and MDDW), the results in Figures 4 and 5 below are based on survey results from the period from June to August 2017 (during the rainy season) and the period from November to December 2017 (during the dry season). The timing of the first survey coincides with the hungry season in Burkina Faso, a time when labor demands are high and food stocks are running low before the next harvest, especially for poorer households. The second survey occurred after the harvest. Of the 161 women interviewed, 53.4 percent are involved with the Burkina Rice Commercialization project, 91.7 percent are married, 72.9 percent are in polygamous marriages, and 96.6 percent have children. The average number of children per woman was five, the median age was 39, and the average household size was 16.

Figure 4.

Household Food Insecurity [HFIAS] and Dietary Diversity Scores [HDDS and MDDW] for Rainy and Dry Seasons in 2017 [n = 161]. Source: author surveys

Notes: For Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) and Minimum Dietary Diversity Score for Women (MDDW), the results are the number of nutritional categories from which a household or women consumed food in the past 24 hours. For the Household Food Insecurity Access (HFIAS) Scale (1 = food secure, 2 = mild food insecurity, 3 = moderate food insecurity and 4 = severe food insecurity), the result is tabulated based on the scores to the nine questions in Figure 1.

Figure 5.

Shifts in Household Food Insecurity [HFIAS] and Dietary Diversity Scores [HDDS and MDDW] for Rainy and Dry Seasons in 2017 [n = 161]. Source: author surveys

The findings suggest that the households surveyed are experiencing moderate food insecurity as per the HFIAS scale (3.12 for project households and 3.17 for non-project households in the rainy season, and 3.02 for project households and 3.03 for non-project households in the dry season). Since a decline in this score indicates an improvement, it is not surprising that scores are slightly better after the harvest and that the wealthy tend to do better than the poor. Most important to note is that the differences between project and non-project participants are not significant, and that the poor outside of the project may be doing better than the poor inside the project. More broadly, this higher level of food insecurity is important to note, given that this is the wealthiest part of Burkina Faso (and it is consistent with the Upper Basin Paradox discussed earlier). In contrast, the rainy season levels of dietary diversity (HDDS and MDDW) are relatively high (and here a higher score is better); these scores are likely influenced by an abundance of wild or foraged food available in the rainy season (Ickowitz et al. Reference Ickowitz, Powell, Salim and Sunderland2014). By way of comparison, these levels of dietary diversity are higher than what Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong (Reference Nyantakyi-Frimpong2017) found in nearby northwestern Ghana. These scores tend to decline for the poor in the dry season (when wild foods are less abundant) and increase for the wealthy (who may have more money to spend on sauce ingredients). Interestingly, there is no significant difference (in terms of household dietary diversity and women’s dietary diversity) between those households involved with the rice commercialization project and those not involved with the project.

This finding, that the GR4A project has had limited impact on food security and on the dietary diversity of participants, is not surprising, given that the reach and success of the project has been limited. Women involved with the project only get one quarter ha of land, and a number of confounding factors (poor rains, flooding, destruction by hippos, and commercialization issues) often limit harvests and sales. In terms of potential or anticipated impacts, these impacts should be understood in the context of women’s gendered responsibilities within households in this area. Given that women traditionally provide sauce ingredients for the meal (e.g., vegetables, fruit, meat, and nuts that go into the sauces that accompany a starch), and not staple grains, we might expect women’s involvement with such a project to have a greater impact on dietary diversity than on food security if women use the money earned from rice production to purchase sauce ingredients.

Qualitative information collected during the interview process suggests that other factors than project participation are often more important for determining household food security and dietary diversity. These factors include subsistence production, wild food collection, land tenure, and female agency. To the first point regarding subsistence production, food secure households in this area would historically have been grain self-sufficient, with the use of the market to purchase staples seen as a key indicator of food insecurity and insufficient grain stocks. In contrast, buying sauce ingredients, and certainly meat, would have been seen as a sign of wealth or well-being. As such, value chain approaches need to be cognizant of the ways in which rice is used in rural communities (which vary greatly). Is it a staple grain crop (in which case sales might undermine food security), or is it a luxury crop to be sold for income (in which case sales might improve dietary diversity if the income is spent on nutrition-dense foods)?

How does gender influence the impacts of a GR4A rice project?

Despite GR4A discourses acknowledging the importance of gender, socially constructed gender roles, opportunities, and constraints are constantly impinging on the outcomes of this project on the ground, often undermining its ability to positively influence the income, food security, and dietary diversity of the participating women. Women’s differential access to land, varying constraints within different ethnic groups, and specific economic needs all have an impact on project outcomes. These findings are consistent with the predictions of feminist political ecology outlined earlier in this article.

Women’s access to land varies across southwestern Burkina Faso, and it has a definite influence on the outcomes of the project. To the north of Bobo Dioulasso, we surveyed farmers in two communities dominated by Mossi people, who originated on the Mossi plateau further east in Burkina Faso (see Figure 1). The Bobo are the traditional land stewards in this area, and historically, this zone along the Mouhoun River (also known as the Black Volta) was lightly populated due to black fly infestation. (Long-term exposure to the black fly causes river blindness, or Onchocerciasis.) The United Nations (UN) began spraying in this area in the 1970s to eliminate the black fly and open it up to denser agricultural settlement, particularly for rice production in the flood plains along the Mouhoun River (Grace Reference Grace2013). In semi-structured interviews, village elders stated that the Mossi who came, while originally from Burkina’s Mossi Plateau, had previously spent thirty years in the Office du Niger in Mali (having been forcibly moved there under French colonial rule), and had significant expertise in rice production (Filipovish Reference Filipovish2001). They were invited by the Government of Burkina Faso to move into this area, but they were also compelled to move by the drought of the mid-1980s. The Bobo essentially ceded their land to the Mossi (although it was, in traditional terms, a loan). The Mossi males then effectively controlled all the land within the community, with women gaining access via their spouses or other male family members. When PAPSA improved the wetland area in advance of the GR4A project, they (PAPSA) redistributed the land, and women gained access to a share of the rice plots. The end result was that improvements to the rice lands actually enabled women to obtain increased access to land.

This situation to the north of Bobo Dioulasso may be compared with villages to the south of the city, where Dioula and Senufo communities are the original settlers and maintain control of the land. Here, most of the land is controlled by men, with the exception of the rice lands, which are traditionally controlled by women (with land being passed down from mother to daughter or mother to daughter-in-law). In this situation, when the rice lands were improved by the PAPSA or PRP projects, the land was taken away from the women and then redistributed to both men and women. The end result was that women, on the whole, suffered a loss of control over one of the few areas of farmland over which they had traditional tenure. (Feminist political ecologists Judith Carney [Reference Carney1993] and Richard Schroeder [Reference Schroeder1999] observed a similar situation with agricultural development projects in The Gambia). What these two examples suggest is that varying land tenure arrangements for women across the project zone have a huge impact on project outcomes, and the project model does not account for these differences. While the project may improve female farmers’ access to land in some cases, it actually reduces their tenure rights in others.

Women also face varying constraints across different ethnic groups within the project zone. In contrast to other ethnic complexes in southwestern Burkina Faso, Mossi communities are more patriarchal, and women tend to have less power than their counterparts in the Dioula or Senufo areas (Kevane & Gray Reference Kevane and Gray1999; Kevane & Wydick Reference Kevane and Wydick2001). Surveys in Mossi areas of the project zone revealed that women’s access to key farming inputs (such as seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides) was often more constrained relative to non-Mossi areas (acknowledging that women’s wealth and position relative to co-wives also influenced their access to resources). Mossi women could often only access these inputs via their husbands or another male relative, whereas Dioula or Senufo women could acquire them directly through the GR4A project or in the marketplace. In other words, the same rice commercialization project, operating in two different ethnic communities, tended to conform to different gender norms and expectations. Despite varying gender restrictions, the GR4A project does make it a point to include a certain number of women at each of its project sites. That said, when we were initially prospecting for research villages, we found that in some cases, women were only participating in name, and that their husbands effectively controlled the rice plots and revenues (although they used their wives’ labor on the plots).

Women also often have different economic needs than men. The rice value chains that are being developed by the GR4A project are often in competition with existing value chains, many of which are not legible to external actors, based on their informal nature. These may be pre-existing rice value chains, or they may be value chains for other products such as cashew nuts or shea. In either case, new value chains will only be successful if they meet the needs of the actors involved. In the case of the village of Medinacoura, the GR4A project had arranged for participating farmers to sell their rice harvest to a miller who extended them the improved variety of rice seeds (as identified by the project) on credit. But when it came time to sell, the villagers learned that they would not be paid for several weeks. Rather than wait to receive a higher price for their rice, the majority of rice farmers (and especially women) in Medinacoura decided to sell their rice to local traders who could pay in cash immediately, even though the price was lower. This was upsetting to the GR4A project and the miller, as they thought it was a breach of contract. The female farmers, on the other hand, were desperate for cash, as many had debt obligations and preferred to deal with traders who could compensate them more quickly. Some farmers also believed that they had been misled about the timing of the compensation.

Women also have more cautious attitudes toward credit than men, given their more marginal positions (Theriault, Smale, & Haider Reference Theriault, Smale and Haider2017). The GR4A project was intent on normalizing the use of credit as a way to encourage high external input agriculture. Seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides (particularly herbicides) must all be acquired at the beginning of the season, and many farmers do not have the resources to pay for these outright in cash. In interviews, female farmers shared that they were reluctant to take on debt, and therefore they carefully managed their cash outlays and the risks associated with credit. This gendered difference in attitudes toward agricultural credit is important. Most men have more financial assets and social capital to draw on than women, were they to find themselves in a difficult repayment situation.