The effect of agroecological practices on land allocation between crops in Burkina Faso: a conditional mixed process approach

Food insecurity amid land scarcity challenges many developing countries. Optimal land allocation between crops can improve agricultural productivity and household income. The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of adopting agroecological practices on farm households’ decisions about how to allocate land among different crops in Burkina Faso. Roodman’s recursive Conditional Mixed Process (CMP) method is applied using data collected by LAQAD-S in 2017 as part of the second National Land Management Program, phase 3 (PNGT-II). The results indicate that the adoption of agroecological practices positively affects households’ decisions to allocate their land to sorghum and millet production and negatively affects their decisions to produce cotton, maize. The results also show that access to credit, land area, and agroclimatic zone determine agricultural land allocation decisions. To boost the production of traditional cereals, particularly sorghum, public authorities must encourage the adoption of agroecological practices, including Soil and Water Conservation techniques (SWC), by promoting these techniques and providing financial support to producers through better structuring of farmers’ organizations.