Assessing agricultural resilience under varying economic classes in wet, dry, and normal climate conditions: an application of the novel framework

Climate change poses a major threat to agriculture in Senegal, which accounts for approximately 75% of employment and contributes 15.7% of national GDP. This study evaluates farmer resilience across economic classes under dry, normal, and wet climate conditions in the Groundnut Basin. The analysis applies a framework that explicitly represents the shock-failure-recovery sequence, thereby addressing a limitation of commonly used resilience assessment approaches. Income resilience is evaluated by examining the effects of planting date, plant density, and nitrogen fertilizer management under rainfed conditions. The framework integrates crop simulation outputs with economic risk modeling to quantify income decline following climate or management shocks and subsequent recovery across four economic classes. Resilience assessment combines simulated millet yield responses with socioeconomic and demographic information derived from surveys and the literature, enabling comparison of class-specific responses to climate variability and management choices. Results show that resilience varies across economic classes and management strategies. Late planting with moderate plant density improved resilience for most economic classes, whereas high-input practices increased vulnerability under extreme dry and wet conditions. Lower-income farmers exhibited higher resilience under certain climate scenarios but showed reduced resilience when adopting alternative management practices. These findings highlight the importance of context-specific adaptation strategies and bundled management interventions. The proposed framework supports resilience theory by linking biophysical variability with economic recovery dynamics and offers a practical tool to inform climate adaptation policies aimed at designing targeted, climate-smart strategies for smallholder systems in Senegal and other rainfed regions facing similar risks.