Crafting resilience: Bricolage in smallholder oil palm agroforestry in southern Benin

Resilience is frequently discussed in agroforestry systems but is often assessed through predefined indicators rather than observed practices. This paper presents a conceptual re-analysis synthesis examining how resilience is enacted in smallholder oil palm agroforestry systems in southern Benin. It re-analyses previously published empirical material through a bricolage-resilience diagnostic framework to examine how farmers recombine technical and institutional resources to manage land scarcity, soil degradation, market uncertainties, and tenure insecurity. Across traditional Dura groves and village Tenera plantations, farmers implement interconnected practices including varietal mixing, intercropping, organo-mineral fertilisation, and informal land arrangements. These practices allow households to secure short-term food crops production while maintaining longer-term system functioning. These configurations are not fixed management models but evolving assemblages shaped by constraints, opportunities, and locally available resources. Bricolage is expressed through the selective reuse, adaptation, and recombination of practices, enabling farmers to navigate uncertainty without relying on standardized technological packages. Rather than following recommended management models, farmers progressively modify practices according to labour availability, resource access, and local ecological feedback. By foregrounding bricolage as a central mechanism, the study emphasizes farmer agency in shaping adaptive agroforestry systems. The results show that resilience emerges from continuous adjustment of agroforestry management. Resilience thus emerges as a dynamic and practice-based process rooted in situated experimentation and ongoing recombination. Recognising these adaptive processes can improve the design of extension approaches and policies by supporting locally grounded management strategies instead of uniform prescriptions.